


The Ocean's Protector

by betthoven



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Canon Compliant, Illnesses, The Galaxy Garrison, at least until the last part, hunk is the best, i love him so much, ocean child au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-08-20
Packaged: 2019-05-16 21:48:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 34,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14819498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betthoven/pseuds/betthoven
Summary: Due to unusual circumstances, an ancient ocean spirit becomes Lance McClain. He then accidentally becomes part of Voltron and must help save the universe with everyone else. However, the past always finds a way to make itself known.





	1. Chapter 1

The ocean is a place full of unknowns, of beings that humans have yet to discover, of adventure and mystery. The ocean has tides that can pull you under and currents that can sweep you away, never to be seen again. The ocean has its own kind of magic, an undisturbed, ancient magic, untouched by man.

There is a being from the ocean that few have seen. Those select few have told stories of the mischievous spirit of a young boy. They call him the ocean’s child.

PART I

One day, a family went to the beach: a mom, dad, and four children. It reminded them of the beaches that they left behind when they moved, but also planted a seed in their minds that this new place could be their home. The parents left their two sons, the eldest child and the youngest child, to go play while they watched the twins. “Marco,” the mom said, “Make sure Lance doesn’t get into too much trouble.” With a wink and a playful pat, he was sent off to look after his baby brother.

It was minutes into their fun at the beach, kicking and throwing sand at each other, when Lance saw the figure of a boy about his age standing in the water and watching them. “Hello!” Lance yelled to him, “Come, play with us!” A grin developed on the face of the boy and he joined them in their fun. The three of them played together for hours in the sand and water until shouts from the boys’ mother called them back.

Before the two boys could get too far from their friend, Lance turned around to face him again. “You’ll play with us again, right?” The boy smiled and nodded and Lance turned back to catch up with his brother.

“Who was your friend?” Their mom asked them. They looked at each other, for they had never asked what his name was, so they shrugged. She gave them a questioning look to which Marco replied “I’ll just go ask him real fast.” But there was no sign of their friend.

 

The next time the family went to the beach, it was much cooler. They had been busy since the last time they came and they couldn’t make the drive to the beach without it interfering with their schedule in some way. But now, even the biting ocean breeze couldn’t steer them away from their fun.

Apparently the chilly water could, though.

They settled on making a huge sand fortress together, each one having their own vision on how it should look and complaining that “No, Veronica, the turrets should be smaller,” and “Luis! Make the moat deeper!” The siblings were about to start throwing the wet sand at each other when another body made its way into the group, silently fixing each detail they had shouted at each other with the same grin the boys had seen the last time they met him.

The fortress was finished in record time, somehow managing to satisfy each of the children there. Their parents were astonished at the magnificent work of art before them, and then horrified as the two boys promptly smashed the entire thing underfoot. The friend that had helped them laughed heartily at their antics, the parents noticing him for the first time. (“I knew we had one too many children here.” The father muttered softly, a small smile forming.)

“You must be the boy that Marco and Lance played with last time,” The mother said gently. “I am Rosa, and this is my husband Michael, I hope my children haven’t been too much of a bad influence on you.” The boy and the woman chuckled at that before she continued on, “So, what’s your name?”

The playful smile dropped from his face and he looked at the ground. Rosa had the slightest feeling that the atmosphere around them had gotten colder. She looked at him and gave him a small smile, “Do you know where your parents are?”

His brows creased even further as if he was trying to recall a memory stashed in the deepest corners of his mind. “Do you have any family?” She tried again, worry growing with every second.

Then the tension in the atmosphere dissipated completely as Lance strode up to them and swung an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Mamá stop nagging him.”

She focused her gaze on him instead, allowing a small feeling of delight seep into her as he noticeably shrunk under the weight of her stare. “Lance, hijo, this is an important discussion that I am trying to have with your friend here.”

He looked between the two of them, confusion knit into his features, stared at his mother for a moment and a half before locking his feet into the sand beneath him. “I can be mature, let me into this discussion too.”

His friend looked to him with a small smile of gratitude as the elder woman sighed and muttered something about not signing up for this when she had kids. “Lance, do you happen to know his name?” She asked, sarcasm dripping from her lips.

Fortunately, or unfortunately, the sarcasm went right over Lance’s head and he turned to his friend for an answer, getting nothing but a shrug in return. Lance developed his thinking posture for a quick moment before snapping softly and yelling “Alejandro!” loud enough for his father to look back at them from where he tried to calm his crying sisters.

“Lance, what?” His mother questioned before being interrupted.

“That’s his name: Alejandro!” Lance chirped. He looked at his friend, “Your name is Alejandro, okay?”

“Alejan…dro?” He asked, hesitating for just a moment, blinking and saying “Alejandro.” With more definitely.

“Lance, you can’t just name a stranger you found on the beach, he-he doesn’t even have a family!” Lance’s mother tried to reason with him.

Lance was having none of that. “He’s not a stranger mamá, he’s my friend. And we-we can be his family!”

His mother gave him an exasperated look before calling the others to go back home, the long hours of the day reduced to a number of minutes until nightfall; her daughters ran toward their car, Marco and their father not far behind. She softly grabbed Lance by the forearm but had to drag him with her to the car. “Wait, mamá, mother! What about Alejandro?” Lance yelled at her. He received no response. “Don’t worry, we’ll be back soon!” He shouted to an empty beach.

 

It was months before they went back to the beach; the harsh winter made it near impossible to get there and none of them were too keen to go in the cold weather. Nevertheless, the moment Luis deemed it warm enough to go back, they were packing towels and sunscreen, umbrellas and a picnic basket full of food for lunch, and they set out on the road.

Nobody else was there since it was only early spring and the water was freezing, but the family was elated to be there. They unpacked their lunch and settled down on a bench near the sand to eat. Lance was about to take a bite of his sandwich when he saw a figure on the beach out of the corner of his eye. He dropped the sandwich and sprinted over to his friend, enveloping him in a bear hug of which his friend confusedly returned.

Lance grabbed his arm and guided him to their bench, sat him down, and gave him half of his sandwich. The family and the friend gave Lance strange looks that he didn’t notice till he was almost done with his sandwich. “What?” He asked, taking another bite.

“Who is that?” Veronica asked, blunt as ever.

Lance gasped in shock. “He’s our friend remember? He helped us build a sand fortress last time we were here and-and Marco! He played with us the first time we came, remember? His name is Alejandro, right mamá?”

His mother merely sighed and took a large water bottle from the cooler they brought. Alejandro, however, looked down at the sandwich half Lance gave him in curiosity.

“You know how to eat that, right?” Lance softly asked him, making sure his friend is okay. This time, the curious look is directed at Lance. “Watch,” Lance said, holding up the remains of his own sandwich. “You take a bite,” he took a small bite, “You chew it,” he started chewing, “And then you swallow.” He tilted his head up and swallowed so that Alejandro could see the process.

The sandwich slowly moved towards Alejandro’s mouth and the other took a small bite out of it, repeating the process Lance showed him. After he swallowed, he coughed a little. “What’s in here?” He asked, moving the bread slices away to get a better look inside.

“That, my dear Alejandro, is a tuna sandwich.” Luis said cheerfully from the other side of the bench.

Alejandro paled and put the sandwich down. “Tuna… as in the fish?”

“Yep!” She replied, the smile never leaving her face.

Alejandro handed the sandwich back to Lance. “You can have the rest.” Lance gladly accepted the sandwich and wolfed it down.

Once lunch was over, the children went to run and play in the water together. The girls found washed up seaweed that they rung together to resemble a crown and plopped it on Marco head as a prank. Marco threw sand at them and combed the seaweed out of his hair while his sisters giggled.

They swam into the ocean, bodies quickly becoming used to the chilly water, and splashed each other. Alejandro showed them how to use the waves to help them swim faster, Veronica and Luis found beautiful shells that they gave to their parents, and the boys had races that Alejandro easily won each time.

Night had already fallen when they realized how long they’d been playing. They went to their parents, exhausted and ready for a good night’s sleep. They quickly piled into the car and left, none of them, not even Lance, noticed when Alejandro had disappeared.

 

Every couple of weeks the family would make the time to go to the beach. There they would meet up with Alejandro and play together until sunset when the parents called them over to eat dinner. During dinner they would talk about their day, branch off onto random topics, and usually end in a food fight initiated by Lance.

One time they got on the topic of one TV show they liked to watch and their favorite characters. Marco and Veronica were arguing over which one of their favorites was better, so they turned to Alejandro to be the tie breaker.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I would have to agree with Veronica?” He said, his playful smile becoming one of hesitant confusion.

Lance was the one to react. “What do you mean ‘you don’t know what we’re talking about’? It-it’s the thing! You’d have to live under a rock to not know about it!”

“Lance!” His mother shushed him, lightly patting his head. Lance’s confusion vocalized itself in a strained “What?”

Alejandro gave them a small smile, “It’s okay, I guess I do sorta live under a rock.”

“What does that mean?” Lance interrupted.

“What do you mean ‘what does that mean’?” He mocked. The children burst out laughing – Luis managed to fall off of the bench – and even the parents let out small chuckles.

Lance sported a large smile and wrapped an arm around his friend. “This is why I like you more than my siblings.” The laughter soon died down until only Luis was left to stifle his giggles.

His mother quickly turned the conversation back on topic. “So, Alejandro, where do you live?”

He grabbed another sandwich half and set it on his plate before saying “The ocean,” so softly that she thought she imagined it.

“I’m sorry, did you say ‘the ocean’?” She asked, worry creeping back into her tone.

Alejandro put his hand to his chin in the stereotypical thinking posture. “How do I explain this…” He whispers to himself. “Do you know about urban legends?”

“You mean like mothman?” Veronica answered with her mouth full of food.

He nervously laughed. “Not quite. Um, what about myths?”

Luis is the first to answer this time. “You mean like Greek mythology?”

He paused, thinking of an answer, then said “Humans have existed for a long, long time. But the amount of time that humans have existed can’t compare to the amount of time that the world you live on has existed, and yet, you managed to create societies, to advance and develop at a rapid pace. You once used to believe in self-created myths of gods and monsters and heroes. You used to have such faith in them that they became real, every myth of every society. But many of them have become forgotten, and they’ve faded away into nothing.”

“What does this have to do with you?” Veronica probed.

“A long time ago, I lived on an island; we worshipped the ocean around us as the giver of life because she gave us fish and water and everything we needed. But she was also seen as a bringer of death.”

The atmosphere became serious; Alejandro suddenly looked much older than his youthful features should allow. “Kind of a juxtaposition really. We had this prophecy going back centuries warning of a flood that would kill the entire island. It scared everyone so no one ever really talked about it; the kids only heard of it from the elders when they absentmindedly discussed stuff.”

He took a bite of his sandwich, stalling.

“I don’t actually remember how old I was when the prophecy came true; the chief noticed the change in weather first and told everyone that in order to save ourselves, a sacrifice must be done.” He takes a few shaky breaths. “They-they chose me to be the sacrifice because I was, apparently, the perfect sacrifice. They threw me off a cliff and into the ocean after saying a prayer to the water.”

The children let out audible gasps. Alejandro grinned a bit, too small to see, and allowed himself the luxury to awe the children even more.

“I tried to swim, but hey, I was a sacrifice and us sacrifices are supposed to be consumed, not stay afloat.” He took another bite of his sandwich, halving the rest of it. “The water dragged me under, no matter how hard I tried to get back up.

“I could feel myself dying, my lungs begging for air. I felt what it was like to drown, water crashing into your lungs as you breathe in, hoping for air, knowing there is none. Then I called out to the ocean,” He paused, the drama reaching a peak.

“I asked her ‘why?’ and she answered, telling me of a thing called science and the natural balance between that and herself. She told me that she had no control over the fact that our island was going to sink into her depths, and she cried when she realized they had done a sacrifice instead of heeding her warning. ‘There is something big coming. It is far in the future, but not far enough.’ She said, and then I saw the pale figure of a beautiful woman reaching out to me, and when she touched me, the pressure within my chest went away and I found that I didn’t need to breathe anymore. ‘I know only what the gods above have told me, but that information is enough to know that this world is going to need someone to protect it.’ She said. ‘I have chosen you to be my child, and if you will accept it, then you will be tasked with the burden of caring for the world until it’s final days. I will assist you as best I can.’

“I told her that I accepted, and I never saw her again.

“Over the years, I have seen the human race grow: I’ve seen the many great things you have created, and the many bad things. You have polluted our waters simply because you could, wrecked vessels with your carelessness, and… created programs to filter the garbage. Before I met you, I thought of the human race as purely egocentric with no regard to how you affect the world you live on. But now, now that I’ve met you, you’ve helped change the way I view humans. Not all of you are bad. There’s still kindness and compassion in this world.” He gave everyone a grateful smile. “Thank you.” Then he finished his sandwich.

The parents quietly whispered to each other in the back.

Alejandro stood up, “It’s getting late and you guys need to go to sleep.” He said and walked towards the beach, allowing his smile to be replaced with a melancholy frown.

He doesn’t get far until he’s stopped by Lance grabbing his arm. “Promise me you’ll come back.”

His surprise is evident, prompting Lance to elaborate on what exactly brought this up. “You-you have the entire ocean, but us- me, we’ve only got you. So you’ll have to promise me that you’ll come back.”

“Only if you promise too.” Alejandro replied.

Lance’s worried face broke into a smile and he hugged Alejandro. “I promise.” He whispered.

Alejandro smiled and sunk into the hug. “I promise.”

 

Many more years went by and Lance and Alejandro’s friendship only got stronger. Lance invited him to their house to introduce him to all of the new things, a nice homemade meal, and a bunch of cartoons. He taught him some things he learned in school and when Alejandro asked if he could teach him everything, Lance obliged.

The family adjusted to Alejandro’s presence, including going to the beach more often. It was obvious that Lance was the person Alejandro preferred most, but he also came to connect with the other children.

He learned that Marco loves painting, and when he went off to college to major in law, he would always write back to his family.

He discovered Luis’s love of animals when they encountered a hurt bird on the beach. He was volunteering at the local animal hospital, in hopes that he could become a vet one day, and instantly set out to help it. He left for college a few months after that to pursue a veterinary degree.

Veronica was a dancer and she invited him to all of her performances, stunning the audience every time. When she was old enough for a job, her dance studio offered her work as an assistant; realizing that this was what she wanted in life, she accepted.

Alejandro hadn’t made friends with just the kids, though. The McClain parents grew to love him as well, inviting him to their house for dinner on nights when it was far too cold to eat outside, and growing to let him sleep over for weeks at a time and eventually live there. He learned their names too: Rosa and Michael.

When most of the McClains were gone for school or work, it was just Lance and Alejandro in the house. Lance loved to tell Alejandro of his dreams of becoming a pilot someday, “Ya know, like in the cartoons. The people who fly cool ships around and look awesome!” He would exclaim, lights of joy dancing in his eyes.

It seems like Lance’s wish was heard when he comes home from school one day and finds a letter addressed to him from the Galaxy Garrison. He opens it and his mouth drops. “I got in.” He whispers. “I got in!” He gasps again. “They saw my piloting tests and they’re willing to pay half of the tuition!”

“Alright!” Rosa yells. “This calls for a celebration! We’ll have a special dinner tonight, how does that sound?”

Lance hugs her.

 

The Saturday started off great. Lance was able to sleep in until 11:30 and only woke up because his mom yelled at him to get out of bed.

Alejandro had gone back to the ocean the day before, leaving Lance as the only kid left in the house. Remembering this, Lance let out a sigh and sat up.

The entire room spun in his vision and his head felt terribly off balance. Thinking that it might be from sitting up too quickly, Lance laid back down, took a few deep breaths, and sat back up. The room spun again.

His breaths came in short huffs as his head started to hurt worse with each movement. Lance managed to get out of the bed, but slammed into the wall a moment later. He was sure he had never felt this terrible ever before.

Somehow, Lance made it to the bathroom, crashing into the walls lining the hallway. He dropped himself in front of the toilet just in time as his body started to heave into it. Nothing came out and Lance was left sitting over the toilet while the pressure on his head worsened. He tried to move, but he once again felt nauseous and leaned back over the toilet to dry heave again.

Rosa finds him lying on the bathroom floor, staring at the ceiling as if it’s the most interesting thing he’s ever seen. “Lance?”

Instead of responding, he glances towards her and shuffles a bit. She gives him a weird look and tells him she’ll get a pillow for him.

When she comes back fifteen minutes later, he is still in the same position and Rosa is slightly worried. “Lance are you okay? Can you try to sit up?”

Lance sighs and slowly sits up, bolting for the toilet the moment his back is vertical. He heaves into the toilet and, once again, nothing comes out. He looks up at his mother and Rosa is startled by how pale he is. She rushes forward and holds a hand to his forehead, instead of being abnormally hot, he is much colder than she expected.

Unlike his siblings, Lance was never really sick as a child. Most children got stomach bugs and the flu, but Lance never seemed to be affected by them. Seeing him here, blood drained from his face and lips, Rosa feels a sense of fear that sends shivers down her spine.

“Lance, can you stand?” He replies with a small groan. “Come on, hijo, we’re going to see the doctor.”

He grabs a trash can beside the toilet and uses one arm to hold it while the other braces the wall for him to stand. He takes a few steps before he pauses to throw up: this time, a small amount of water comes out.

Their trip to the doctor’s office is slow and uneventful. When they arrive there, Lance once again pukes, a bitter, yellow substance resembling bile being heaved into the tiny trash can. There, the doctor observes him casually and, after a long while, decides the best course of action would be admission to the nearest hospital.

At the hospital’s admissions office, Lance leans against the wall to keep from accidentally falling over or moving so much that he has to puke again. The hospital accepts him on the case of a migraine due to dehydration, though that is only a temporary diagnosis.

Once they are in the room, Lance has an IV stuck in him, and a nurse has explained the situation, Lance falls asleep. He sleeps until the hospital staff in charge of bringing food comes in with dinner in the form of a tray for him and a tray for Rosa. She looks surprised to see food for herself but graciously accepts it.

Lance groggily looks at his plate of clear liquids and sighs. He swallows a few spoonfuls of broth before he decides that it’s enough. “You haven’t eaten anything all day.” His mother chastises him. “Eat more.”

“I can’t eat more. I’m full.” Lance responds. “How’s the hospital food?”

“It’s hospital food, not the best but not the worst either.”

“I need to pee.”

The nurse from earlier comes in again. “I see you’ve eaten. You should really walk around sometime, just to keep yourself active.” Then she takes his vitals and leaves.

Walk around? Lance thinks. No thanks. However, unlike his thoughts, he swings his legs over the side of the hospital bed and shakily stands up. He grabs the trashcan as his mother walks around to help steady him. She grabs his IV stand as Lance slowly walks into the bathroom. He stands there, mentally begging his legs not to give out underneath him. Once he’s done, he moves to wash his hands, but it’s too fast and he feels something build up inside of him. He leans against the sink, the trash can in front of him, and he waits as the pre-vomiting sensation ends and the broth from earlier makes an appearance again. 

Lance feels like crying as he stares at the regurgitated soup, emotions swarming his brain to quickly for him to fully process them. He finishes his business without letting go of the trash can and plops himself on the bed as fast as he can, only completely resting once he is sure he is safe in the confines of the bed.

Rosa takes one look at him and one inside of the trash can. She sighs and goes back to the chair in the corner. Now, it seems very unlikely that they’ll get out tomorrow.

 

Lance is woken up several times throughout the night for the nurse to take his vitals and falls back into slumber after each visit.

He fully awakens as he hears familiar voices surrounding him. His eyes slowly open and he winces, the light hurting his head far more than he anticipated. Suddenly, the smiling faces of the twins are above him, blocking the dreaded overhead light and relieving Lance of the headache.

“Lance!” Luis cries, lunging at him for a hug. His twin sister blocks him as she hugs him first.

“Lance, we’ve been so worried!” Veronica sniffs as Luis goes around to the other side and drapes himself over both of them.

“Guys,” Lance weakly laughs, “What are you doing here?”

“We heard that you were in the hospital and we knew that we just had to see you!” Veronica says.

“So,” Luis starts, “How are you? Do you feel any better? I heard you’re in for dehydration, is that still true?”

“The doctor hasn’t been in yet so I don’t know what the diagnosis is…” Lance trails off as he yawns.

They watch him in confusion that quickly dissipates into understanding. “We woke you up!” Luis exclaims.

“It’s okay, I didn’t need any more sleep anyways.” Lance waves it off.

“But still, we-“ Luis is interrupted as the door opens and the doctor steps in.

She looks like she is in need of a good nap, as if the large bags under her eyes didn’t give her away enough. “Lance McClain,” She says, “Admitted because of… blah blah blah… clear liquids diet… okay. I ordered you an MRI for later today, so we’re gonna scan your brain and see if anything’s wrong. After that, I have a nice selection of meds that we’re going to give you every… 12 hours that’ll hopefully make you feel better. Any questions?”

Veronica raises her hand. Lance internally groans.

“Yes?” The doctor says, looking at Veronica.

“Why are you gonna scan his brain?”

“The MRI creates a visual model of the tissue in your brain. It can determine whether it’s all good or if there’s some bad tissue that could cause problems. The neurologist will be in sometime today or tomorrow. Today if the MRI results found something, tomorrow if it’s all clear.” She sighs. “Are there any more questions?”

Luis raises his hand.

“Yes?”

“Where do you find the snacks?”

 

Veronica and Luis left before Lance’s MRI was scheduled for, so Rosa waited for him during the procedure. Once he was out and being wheeled in a wheelchair, Rosa allows herself a moment of peace. This might actually turn out alright.

“How was it?” She asks Lance as they’re on their way back to the hospital room.

“It was kind of scary. There were a bunch of different sounds and they shocked me sometimes.” Lance hesitates.

“You need to try walking some more in a little while.” Rosa pushes. She is confident in her son’s ability to push through these hard times.

It was over an hour later when she finally got Lance to stand up again. He moves towards the door when he sees a figure approaching his room.

The same figure comes into the room, takes a look at him, and tells him to please sit down. “Hi,” the figure says. “I’m the neurologist.

“When I was first contacted about your condition and symptoms, I thought it might be an inner ear thing. However, I still requested for an MRI to be done just to see what might pop up.” Here, the neurologist pulls out a sheet. “This is your brain. It’s normal-sized and the tissue looks healthy. There is this small spot right here that’s worrying us, though.” A slim finger points at a section of the picture that neither Lance nor Rosa can tell what it’s supposed to be. “We’ve analyzed what it could be and have determined that it’s most likely cerebral cavernous hemangioma.”

Rosa gasps. “What’s that?”

“It’s a malformation within blood vessels that causes them to collect and form a sort of tumor. It usually begins when the patient is born and develops over time. Most people with this don’t show any symptoms and live their life normally so it really shouldn’t be much of a problem. But, if this does get worse then you really should come back and talk with us.” The neurologist stands up and gives them a smile. “I’ll tell the doctor about the recent developments and we’ll see where to go from there.”

Standing up, Rosa nods quietly and shakes the neurologist’s hand in a polite gesture.

The nurse comes back in one the neurologist is gone, followed by another nurse. They stand beside his bed and the previous nurse introduces the new one to them. It’s a shift change and they’re simply updating the new nurse on what’s happened and telling Rosa and Lance that the new nurse will be taking over.

Once they’re gone, Rosa forces Lance to get up and walk for a bit. Lance is surprised when he manages much more than he expected.

After their walk, he slips back into his bed and falls asleep.

 

He awakens multiple times throughout the night as the nurse comes in to take his vitals. As he sleeps more, he starts to feel much better than the days before. When he fully regains his senses, he doesn’t feel the pressure that used to constantly be there.

Then he moves his head to look at his mom and has to close his eyes as the pain in his head skyrockets. He takes a breath and everything clears again.

The nurse comes in again and is surprised to him awake. “How are you feeling?” He asks softly.

“Much better.” Lance smiles.

“That’s good. The doctor will be coming in a few hours to assess you again. Have you been walking?”

“A bit. It doesn’t hurt as bad now.”

The nurse smiles again. “Keep at it and you might go home today.”

Hope sparks in Lance’s mind and Rosa stirs in her chair. “Hello,” she says politely to the nurse.

“Hi,” he responds. “I hear that Lance is doing much better.”

“He really is.” Rosa grins.

 

The doctor comes in a few hours later and asks him how he’s been. After receiving details on the situation, she makes the decision that as long as he is able to pass the physical therapist’s test, he can be discharged.

When the physical therapist comes, they do a series of activities – including stretching and walking – to make sure that he will be okay when he’s finally discharged. After the tests are done, the therapist deems him in good enough shape to be discharged. “Don’t work yourself too hard, though.” She advises.

The nurse form earlier comes back and sets up the discharge papers, telling them that it’ll take a while. He also tells them that the neurologist isn’t too worried but they’re still prescribing a few pills of Toradol just in case.

It’s a long while until everything is finally prepared for Lance to be fully discharged. Once it is, they say thanks to the nurse and leave.

Michael waits in a car outside for them and helps Lance get in. “How are you feeling?” He asks.

“Much better.” Lance answers. “How’s Marco?”

“He’s been working on this large art piece that some wealthy person apparently commissioned.”

“That’s really fancy.”

“Mhm.”

Rosa looks between the two of them and sighs.

Lance suddenly realizes he hasn’t seen Alejandro in a long time. “Where’s Alejandro?”

“Last time I saw him was at the beach.”

“Of course he was.”

The conversation dies off and Rosa turns up the radio, allowing them to sit in the sounds of music flowing through.

Michael drops the two of them off at their house and leaves to go back to work. “I’ll be back soon.” He pecks Rosa on the cheek.

Rosa tells Lance to rest up for school tomorrow and Lance, not wanting to disappoint his mom, does as he’s told.

 

The rest of the week flies by as Lance finds himself longing for the weekend. He convinced his parents to go to the beach even though it’s only early spring.

When he wakes up on Saturday, he shoves on clothes and runs to greet his parents for breakfast, wolfing down food as fast as he can so that they can get to the beach as early as possible. Lance is full of pure energy throughout the car ride and Rosa laughs when she sees him bouncing in the backseat.

They get to the beach and Lance sprints over to the spot where they typically find Alejandro waiting: he’s not there.

Disappointed, Lance walks back to his parents when he sees Alejandro walking towards him. He rushes to meet him with a hug.

“I haven’t seen you in such a long time.” Lance says.

Alejandro averts his gaze. “I know.”

“Is something wrong? You know you can tell me if anything’s bothering you: that’s what friends are for after all!”

His best friend sighs. “I’ve been thinking… we should distance ourselves from each other.”

Lance blinks. “What?”

“You’re growing up, soon you’ll leave to take control of your own life and being here to see me would just hold you back. Besides, you will die one day but I’ll just keep existing like I have for the past ten thousand years.”

“Wait, you don’t really think that you’d hold me back, do you?”

“I’m sorry, I should get going.”

“Wait!” Lance calls out for his friend, but Alejandro is already slipping into the smooth ocean water, disappearing under the waves. “Why would you…”

 

As the months go by, the meetings between Lance and Alejandro become sporadic and rare. Lance finds himself missing his best friend as his health slowly gets worse. It started with small headaches during extensive activity, but they slowly became more prominent throughout the day and Lance soon found himself having to sit down and breathe for a couple of minutes after just walking down the stairs.

They visited the neurologist as it got worse and Lance was able to show off his lack of balance. With each visit, he got worse and the neurologist was slightly alarmed.

“I don’t know how it developed from minor hemangioma to major so quickly, but it did.” He says while surveying Lance’s vision as Lance looks around the room, eyes never resting in one place for too long. “I would recommend surgery to try and get it out since it seems like there’s no other option.”

Rosa swallowed painfully. “Thank you for your suggestion, we will take it into consideration.”

The neurologist looks at her. “I’m sorry I can’t do more, but I hope you’ll get through this.”

Back home, Rosa slumps against the kitchen counter. They had only recently paid off the MRI bill and now the doctor wants them to pay for surgery? She watches her son as he leans against the couch, breathing deeply to regulate another headache.

“Lance,” She calls out.

“Don’t worry about me mom. Just do what you need to do.” Lance responds before making his slow trek to his upstairs room.

He’s only going to get worse… She thinks to herself.

 

At the beach, Alejandro sits alone, watching the waves move against the rough sand. In all his life, he had never really watched the waves from above the surface of the water, choosing instead to swim with the sea life and explore the depths in ways only he knew.

He had never felt so lonely before, so why does he feel this way now?

He turns back to the sea, wanting to lose his thoughts in the movements of the waves as the sun reaches its peak in the sky. A hand grabs his shoulder and Alejandro freezes.

“Sorry for grabbing you like that, I just have a bit of a hard time moving up and down.” Lance says, sitting down next to him. “We need to talk.” He says seriously, giving Alejandro a glance.

The other sighs. “I-“

“Before you say anything, I want to say a few things.” Lance interrupts. “You never let me talk the last few times I came to say hi because you’ve been too busy avoiding me. This time, you are going to sit right here and listen to what I have to say. All of it.” Then he sighs. “I haven’t been well recently. There’s a thing inside my head called a cavernous hemangioma or something and its really been messing me up. I can’t do as much as I used to because I get these horrible headaches that makes it feel like my brain has pressure all around it that’s… squeezing it.”

“That sounds really bad.” Alejandro comments, not really knowing how to respond to that.

Lance laughs. “The initiation for the Galaxy Garrison is in less than a month and I still haven’t told them that I can’t go.”

“You can’t go?” Alejandro squeaks. “What do you mean you can’t go?”

“Alejandro, buddy, I can’t ride a bicycle without feeling like I’m going to collapse, how do you expect me to pilot an entire plane without passing out at least once?”

“Isn’t flying a plane a bit different from riding a bicycle?”

“They’re both pretty similar, actually.”

“I’ve never ridden a bicycle.”

“I know. That’s why I convinced dad to bring my bicycle today.”

Alejandro freezes again. “You what?”

“Yeah,” Lance grins. “I’ll teach you how to ride a bicycle.”

The two of them slowly walk to the McClain’s car and get Lance’s bike out. Alejandro sits on it awkwardly as he straps the helmet on. It’s slightly large on him, but it still works. He puts his limbs where Lance instructs him to, Lance himself sitting on a bench not too far away to stay away from too much physical activity. Doctor’s orders.

“Is this okay?” Alejandro asks for the eleventh time.

“Don’t worry and just go! Try to keep your balance: don’t put too much force on one handlebar!” Lance calls out.

He gets on the bike and pushes the pedals slowly, listening as the rusty gears turn and the bike moves forward. Then he wobbles and his surge of confidence quickly dissipates as he falls, crashing against the pavement.

“You’ll get it eventually: just keep pedaling!” Lance yells.

This time, Alejandro starts off with faster pedaling and the bike starts moving quicker. He finds the new speed easier to balance and he starts to see just why Lance likes to bike. He makes a few laps around the parking lot before coming to a stop in front of Lance.

“You look like you were having fun.” Lance smirks.

“I think I saw your parents back there.” Alejandro points behind him.

“That’s fine.” Lance waves it off. “You should sit down.”

Soon, the bench is taken over by the two of them. “I can’t believe that’s what flying feels like.” Alejandro says in awe.

“Haha, it doesn’t feel like that all the time, but most of the time, yeah.”

“That’s a beautiful feeling.” Alejandro smiles softly, the first one Lance has seen in weeks.

Lance swallows a bit. “Hey, I’ve been thinking… you once mentioned that you’ve been here for thousands of years, and yet, when we first met, you looked my age. You still look like you’re my age now. As in we’ve grown together, not that you still look like a six-year-old.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“You’re a shape-shifter.”

“You’re right. Your head really is messed up…”

“No, I mean it! It makes perfect sense that you’d be able to shift your physical form to whatever’s the most beneficial at the time. Humans thousands of years ago probably looked nothing like we do today because of evolution and stuff. I don’t know how to explain it, just thinking about it hurts my head.”

Alejandro gets up to leave, but Lance’s cries of “Come back” persuade him to stay.

“I just want to try something with you.” Lance says, forcing them to look directly at each other. “Try to look like me.”

“No.”

“Come on, it’s just an experiment and if you can do it then it’d be really cool!”

Alejandro sighs and looks intensely at Lance. He studies the way the bones are structured and how his muscles move. He imagines himself becoming exactly like that, a replica of Lance McClain. Lance gasps as he manages to recreate Lance’s face on his own.

“Are you happy? You’ve just outed my deepest secret.”

“That’s just… wow, I never expected it to work. You look so similar too… it’s almost as if you could go to the Garrison in my place.”

Alejandro feels like he’s been hit. “Is that what this is about? You want me to go to the Garrison instead of you?”

“I can’t go.” Lance whispers. “It’s always been my dream to go but I can’t. I doubt I could get into a ship without passing out much less fly it. I can’t see properly either. The Garrison wants great pilot Lance McClain but right now I just can’t do that.”

“Well I can’t do it either. I have no experience.”

“I told you I’d teach you.” He argues. “I just need you to hold my place at the Garrison until everything going on gets better, okay?”

“And how am I supposed to do that?”

“Pretend to be me. Write to me every week about what’s happening. I’ll teach you how to pilot a ship. Just… please do this for me. Let me be selfish just this once.” Lance puts a hand to his forehead and closes his eyes, breathing deeply.

Alejandro is reminded of his own selfish thoughts, wanting to let Lance leave his life early just to spare himself of the heartbreak sure to come. He decides that he should do this for Lance to make up for his horrible friendship. “You’ll teach me how to pilot a ship, right?”

“What will your parents say?”

Lance looks up slowly and grins. “Don’t worry about that; I’ll think of something.”

“Then I’ll do it. For you.”

 

Today is finally the day the new recruits are sent to the Garrison. Families are lined up around the entrance to say goodbye to their children as they set off on a new journey lasting for years at the finest training facility in the world. People from all backgrounds have applied and gotten in.

The McClain family is one of the many where everyone decided to show up to say goodbye to their sibling.

“Don’t forget to write to us!” The twins shout at Lance.

“I’ll come and visit every chance I get!” Rosa yells.

“Stay true to yourself, little bro.” Marco says as he ruffles Lance’s hair.

At the entrance, the youngest McClain pauses and turns to look back at the people he calls family. He waves as extravagantly as he can and watches in excitement as they wave back. Then, Alejandro turns and walks into the Galaxy Garrison.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's taken me almost ten months to actually do this and I doubt it would've been completed without my friends nagging me to actually write it. This idea has been in my head for a while now and I couldn't get it out no matter how long of a break I took on this thing. I hope you guys enjoyed it and the next chapter should be out on Monday or Tuesday. If anything doesn't make sense, then I hope it'll get explained in the next chapter. (key word: hope)
> 
> Thanks!


	2. Chapter 2

PART II

 

The inside of the Garrison is much bigger than what he was expecting. Ceilings tower high above the children, making it seem like a larger space than it actually is. The flood of people coming in is diverted into smaller strands for the paperwork collection and orientation seating.

He decided to walk all the way over to the smallest line and got behind a very large person, who was fidgeting a lot and looked exceptionally nervous, never looking at one thing for longer than two seconds. Out of the kindness of his heart, he taps the person’s shoulder and waits for them to respond.

As soon as they turn around, he is greeted with the anxious face of a person around his age. “Hi,” he says as smoothly as he can, “You look kind of nervous.”

The larger boy smiles, blushing lightly and not making eye contact, “oh, I-I do? I’m sorry if that’s bothering you. You see, I’ve just never been around this many people before an-and it’s my first time leaving home without one of my moms and I know I’m a bit big for my age but my moms always say that’s it’s okay and I’m just really worried about the Garrison classes because wh-what if I get behind and I don’t know what I’m doing?” His face contorts with fear, eyes widening as he begins listing everything that could go wrong, “what if I mess something up really badly and get expelled? What if I do the slightest thing wrong an-and everybody makes fun of me? What if I don’t make any friends and I’m just stuck alone forever? Oh, I’m sorry, I started rambling, I do that when I’m nervous…”

Lance smiles in what he hopes is comforting, patting the guy on the shoulder, “don’t worry dude! I’m sure we all have our own insecurities about our rights to be here.” He shoves his paperwork under his arm and sticks out his hand. “Here, if you shake my hand you’ll have your first friend, and then at least one of your worries will disappear.”

The other looks at his hand in surprise and then grabs it, shaking it with renewed energy and a smile to match Lance’s. “Thanks, my name is Malosi Garrett but my friends usually call me Hunk.”

“Hi Hunk, I’m Lance McClain,” he replies with a smile and some growing confidence that maybe this won’t be as bad as he originally believed, “so, Malosi, that’s an interesting name.”

“Yeah,” Hunk laughs weakly, “It means strength in Samoan and my tina thought it would be fitting since I seemed like a strong baby...but my mom only agreed since she thought it was cute.”

“It is cute,” Lance laughs.

Hunk buries his face in his hands, “oh not you too…”

“Next.” The woman at the table in the front of the line calls. Hunk tentatively lowers his hands and scrambles forward to the table. He looks back at Lance with one last pleading look to which Lance gives him a thumbs up and a smile.

Then Hunk’s paperwork is all documented and he is instructed to sit down.

 

Lance nervously walks to the lady at the desk, watching her as she silently stares at him, feeling as though she can see through his disguise. His hands shake as he hands her the paperwork, everything neatly arranged and paper clipped on top.

She takes off the paper clip and the worries at the back of his mind make themselves known.

What if she notices that the physical is only from a few days ago? What if she thinks it’s too perfect? What if something on there doesn’t match up properly? What if I look different from the picture?

A new wave of terror overcomes him as he remembers that he never changed his height, he has always been a few inches shorter than the real Lance McClain.

Is the height on his physical different from the one on his official registration form?

He is handed a small colored piece of paper with a letter and a number next to it. Looking up, he sees the woman put his papers in a small stack on the corner of the desk and then turn her head to face him again. “The color notes which section you’ll be in; the letter notes which row you’ll be in; and the number tells you which seat.” Lance is pushed out of the way as she calls out “Next!”

He looks back at the paper and notes its purple color. Moving toward the purple section, he looks back at the paper. “Row H, seat 5.” He mutters, scanning the aisle for the right row. Lance stares at the seat next to his the moment he notices who’s sitting in it.

Hunk is sitting there.

He breaks into a grin as he sneaks beside him. “Hello, I’m Lance McClain, nice to meet you.” Lance jokes, holding his hand out for a handshake.

Beside him, Hunk jumps at the sound of Lance’s voice but the tension quickly melts into a genuine smile. “Lance! It’s so good to see you again.”

“Did you really think I’d let you go that easily? We’re friends after all and friends stick together.” Lance laughs.

Hunk looks as if he’s about to cry. “That-that’s very nice.” He sniffs.

Their conversation is cut short as a man steps into the stage in front of them; the hum of chatter dissolved into silence. Lance looks behind him to see that most of the empty seats have been filled. 

“Welcome to the Galaxy Garrison!” The man announces. “I am Commander Iverson.”

“Whoa,” Hunk whispers beside him, “he must be really important.” Lance nods, eyes never leaving the Commander.

“The Galaxy Garrison is a special school for young people interested in space to fulfill their dream. We are broken up into three years where the first and second years are full of classes and simulations while the third year holds field work for job experience and for everyone to decide whether they want a job like this or not.

“Your classes this year hold all of the normal subjects with specialized classes for whichever position you wish to hold.” He glances at his watch. “That is all the time we have for tonight. Your rooms and roommates are listed on the posters on the back wall. There are no visitors allowed. Goodnight and good luck.”

Everyone gets up and runs over to the back wall to try and get there first so as to not wait for long.

“I would say that we should go find our rooms and stuff, but it doesn’t look like we’ll be able to get through that crowd any time soon,” Hunk comments, a bit of nervousness clouding it.

Lance laughs, “Don’t worry, I’m sure we can actually see the posters once the crowd clears out.” He says, missing the reason for Hunk’s anxiety completely.

“Yeah, b-but what about our roommates? What if they’re mean and they can’t stand me?” He almost cries.

“Can’t stand you? Hunk, you are an amazing person and I doubt that anyone would be able to be mean to you.” Lance tries to reassure him.

The crowd around the posters diminishes a bit and they make their way over to the one with the least number of people. The font on the posters is so small that they have to squint, and the posters are so large that none of them can easily find their name.

Fortunately, they find their names.

“Look!” Hunk exclaims. “I’m in room 1027, what about you?”

Lance only just found his name. “Um, I think it says 1027…”

Hunk wraps him in a hug. “We’re roommates!”

“What are the odds of that?”

“I think it’s about 1 in 3639.”

“You calculated that??”

 

In room 1027, Hunk and Lance find that their items have already been transported and are laying in the seating area. “Cool,” Lance breathes, having never seen such a feat before. 

Hunk nods, looking around the currently bare room in a emotion similar to wonder, “yeah...but I think we could make it better,” he turns to look at Lance, “if you want to?”

Lance smirks, “definitely.”

The two of them begin unpacking, putting on music when the radio Hunk brought is found and working after some tampering. They dance, Hunk knowing more of the songs than Lance since he’d been underwater when most of them came out, while asking each other questions and even creating a handshake that would soon become more complicated and secretive as the hours went on.

As the afternoon transitions into night, the two of them can’t quell their nervousness for the next day. They talk to each other about things to distract them from tomorrow and they fall asleep satisfied.

 

The official first day comes far too quickly. Hunk was responsible enough to set an alarm, so neither of them were late to breakfast. There, everyone eats and receives their schedules.

Comparing theirs, Lance and Hunk find that they have a few classes together. “Math, History, and English. What better combination of classes could exist?” Lance laughs, “look out though, I’m not too good at Math.”

“Don’t worry, I’ll help if you ever need it,” Hunk says, placing a comforting hand on Lance’s shoulder.

With that, the first bell rings and they leave for to Math together. 

 

“I was expecting the first day to be much harder than it was, I mean, the only thing we did throughout the day was introduce ourselves and get to know each other. Which, honestly, is quite irrelevant because it not only takes away from our teaching time but it also serves no purpose other than to know who exactly will be doing better than you and who you can look up to only to feel the bitter feeling of defeat when you realize you can never be that good,” Hunk rambles at the end of the day. 

Lance looks over to him throughout his speech with conceded glances. “Are you okay?” He asks when it seems like Hunk is done, “for saying that the day was easy you sure seem...stressed.”

“It’s fine,” he sighs, “it’s just that I was expecting something to happen to suddenly make the day worse as the day went on and it stressed me out.” 

“Hey, at least you don’t have your first simulation tomorrow.” Lance laughs, “Commander Iverson was hanging out in the back of the fighter pilot class today and he totally interrupted the teacher, basically commanding all of us to come to the simulation place tomorrow instead of to the classroom so he can assess our skills himself.”

“Oh man, that’s a bit scary. A simulation on your second day?” Hunk shakes.

“I think I’ll get through it okay.” Lance’s laugh isn’t as optimistic this time as he scratches the back of his neck, not meeting Hunk’s eyes. “As someone who’s only here because of a scholarship, I have to do well tomorrow.”

“You’re here on a scholarship?” Hunk whispers loudly.

Lance looks uncomfortable. “Yeah, the Garrison saw the scores of ‘Lance McClain’ on the National Piloting Exam and decided to give my family a scholarship...I didn’t really want to come.” He pokes at his food, trying to ignore Hunk’s shocked expression.

Hunk remains unmoved, trying to fully process the information on his newfound friend. He recovers quickly, shaking his head, “still, you’re here on a scholarship! That must mean you are really good!”

“Shhh!” Lance hisses, finally looking up to make sure no one was listening.

With everything happening, it seems like ages since he’s seen the real Lance, he still remembers his friends words as he was being taught how to pilot: “I don’t know how I got a perfect score on the exam. I’m pretty sure it was just a bout of luck.”

Instead of focusing on those words, he drives his attention to the piloting lessons. Six days spread out over the course of a month for lessons. Each set of two days teaching him everything he needs to know and repeated for the most effective learning. 

Lance sighs, an action Hunk picks up on, “are you feeling okay? You’re looking a bit tired.”

“Yeah, I think some rest would do me some good,” Lance replies, yawning a bit to convince Hunk that fatigue was the full truth.

“I second that.” Hunk grins, moving to help put their dishes away. 

As they go to their room, they have to look at the signs on the wall to know precisely where they’re going since they haven’t memorized the layout yet. On one sign, a certain feature stands out to Lance. 

“There’s a pool?” He all but screams, the meals tiredness fading away at the idea of being in the water again.

Hunk looks confused before looking at the sign, “I guess there is.”

“We have to go there. Right now.” Lance tries to drag Hunk, but Hunk remains basically in the same place, trying to calm the suddenly excited boy.

“Lance, buddy, we need swimsuits first,” Hunk, ever the voice of reason, puts in before Lance could do too much damage. He grabbed Lance and was able to find their room despite Lance’s jumping and energetic movements. They hurried to put on swimsuits due to Lance’s constant comments to hurry. 

Once they got to the pool, Lance immediately jumped in as fast as he could and sank to the bottom, feeling calmer than he had for days. Hunk, however, took his time going to the hot tub in the corner, thankfully empty unlike the pool and the surrounding area, full of people complaining about Lance’s cannonball.

At the bottom of the pool, Lance allows himself to relax and reflect on recent events, a routine he finds to be therapeutic in ways. 

He thinks back to how he got here: the original Lance somehow disappearing and leaving him in his place without anyone noticing. He’s pretty sure no one knows precisely how he did it, but decided not to question it any further. 

After that, Lance pulls up memories of his training. All of it had been crammed in, but he’s relatively sure that all of the important information is there. Lance had started to have trouble remembering certain things while teaching him, but the overarching idea and procedure for piloting is there: what buttons to press, how to actually fly, and how to land a ship. He hopes that’s all there is too it. 

Lance is pulled from his contemplation as he feels himself being forced out of the water and disposed on the poolside concrete. Hunk and a swarm of other students surround him, some are looking down at him with concern while others seem confused at the sudden panic.

“What’s going on?” Lance asks, disgruntled at being shaken from his pondering, looking at Hunk for answers.

Above him, Hunk nearly cries. “Y-you were in there for so long! I didn’t notice how long you’d been under until after five minutes and then I thought that you were just trying to see how long you could hold your breath,” Hunk gasps to take a much needed breath, “I waited but you never came up and I started to really worry! I thought you were drowning so I grabbed you,” a few relieved tears fall from Hunk’s eyes as he covers them in an effort to not let anyone see, “and I’m so glad that you’re alive!” Hunk pulls him into a tight hug. 

“I’m fine.” Lance says into the hug. “Let’s go to bed, okay?”

 

The next day is much different from the previous one: each class gives the students challenging work that tests their minds and their patience. Lance is one of the first to give up during Math and goes to Hunk for some gladly offered help. 

In English, everyone has trouble deciphering Shakespearean speech. Everyone except Lance, who was present at the time it was spoken and is practically fluent in it, according to the others. 

History is the frustrating kind of fun. The teacher makes everything enjoyable, but the subjects were far too complex for the average human. Everyone who shared English with them kept looking to him to see if he knew about the events like he did with archaic texts. Lance didn’t know how to tell them that he was actually underwater for most of the events and only surfaced in Elizabethan London because he was bored.

World War One is a strange topic to start the year with, everyone thinks as the teacher tries to explain the alliances through a flow chart and stuffed animals, confusing some students with the odd style of teaching.

As the day goes on, Lance finds himself looking forward to the simulation and actually getting to test the knowledge he tried so hard to learn in time.

When he finally gets to the simulation room with all of the other pilots, Commander Iverson is already standing there waiting for them. “Today is just a test run and will be exactly the same as the piloting test at the end of the year that will decide whether you will be a fighter or a cargo pilot,” he speaks in a way that grabs everyone’s attention, almost in a voice that demands all attention be on him, walking in front of them to add to his intimidating stance, the teacher obediently standing behind him. 

“You will all do this one at a time and I will make everyone else wait in the hallway so no one will get hurt that they did poorly and everyone else saw.” He stops, looking at each of us in the eyes one by one, “now, get in a line and the first person get in!”

Lance doesn’t have time to comprehend exactly what that means before everyone is sent into the hallway adjacent to the room. Someone announces loudly that they want to be next and no one challenges them. Lance looks to the wall, where the boy that claimed the second spot is standing.

He’s tall, but looks as if he would be shorter than the original Lance, with a mullet like haircut and of possible Korean decent if Lance is remembering correctly.  
“Who is that?” Lance asks quietly, not actually expecting anyone to answer, so he jumps when the girl next to him does.

“Keith Kogane I think, there’s a rumor that he and Takashi Shirogane are brothers, but you can’t always trust rumors.” She explains to Lance, turning to look away once she finished explaining.

“Huh,” Lance says, thinking back to when the original Lance talked about a man named Takashi Shirogane and how he wanted to be just like him before he went on the doomed Kerberos mission. “Maybe I’ll have to speak with this ‘Keith’.”

When it is finally Lance’s turn to run the simulation, about half of the people have already gone. He quickly steps into the large room, looking even bigger and more intimidating without the large group of future pilots. 

“Lance McClain.” Lance jumps at the sound of his name and faces Commander Iverson with a nervous smile. “You did very well on the national exam.”

“Yes, thank you sir, I hope I do not disappoint you,” Lance replies, his voice slightly shaking. He climbs into the simulation and breathes a sigh of relief as he recognizes just about everything. The proper buttons are pressed and he starts the ship up easily. He maneuvers the obstacles with ease and only feels anxious when he realizes he has to land. 

His landings have never been good, not even close, but Lance had faith in him and Lance had done well during their practices. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply as he tilts the ship down for the landing. It’s bumpy, but it’s also probably the best landing he’s had yet. 

Exiting the simulation, he is greeted by Commander Iverson’s instant “What kind of landing was that?”

All elation gone, Lance meekly replies “I haven’t been in a plane for a while now sir, it seems I have forgotten exactly how to make a proper landing. I promise I will get better sir, don’t worry.”

Commander Iverson grunts in response and waves a hand at him, signaling for him to leave and tell the next person to come in. 

 

The rest of their first year passes far faster than anyone imagined and soon final exams loom above everyone. 

Before each final, Lance always says that he’s going out to the city to party with girls, a combination of the original Lance’s personality that he feels the need to preserve and a code between him and Hunk that he’s heading out to the pool. 

Underwater is the perfect place to think back on the most recent letter the McClain family sent and try to remember the final set for the next day. Hunk is always the one to tell him to get out before he “drowns” and he always complies despite not wanting to leave.

None of the finals are too difficult, but everyone leaves the room feeling mentally exhausted and ready for a long nap. Lance especially feels the need to rest after the History final and is knocked out the moment his head hits the pillow, which ends with him missing dinner completely. 

After finals, the only thing left for the students is their position examinations to evaluate each candidate and put them in the position that best matches their abilities. Lance and Hunk give each other their signature handshake, which evolved into something only they could ever hope to remember, and wishes of luck before separating to their rooms. 

In the simulation room, Commander Iverson explains that this evaluation will be the same as the beginning of the year to see how each individual has improved. Everyone goes back into the hallway and chats about what will happen. 

Lance notices that Keith, the person at the top of their class and the boy he noticed on the second day, isn’t talking to anyone. Rather, he’s sitting on a bench looking like he wants to be anywhere but here. The person in the simulation comes out and the next one goes in and Keith announces that he’ll go next before anyone else can take it. 

He waits a few people before deciding that he wants to run the simulation and grabs his spot in line. 

When it is finally his turn, Lance walks in with an air of confidence that he didn’t have last time. “Hello McClain,” Commander Iverson says, looking over a clipboard, “the staff has agreed that this time will be slightly different from before to see how you can handle certain situations that you may run into while in space.”

Lance decides not to think about that as he climbs in and powers up the ship, smiling when he hears the sounds that surround him that let him know the ship is ready for ‘liftoff’. He has gotten better over the year and he feels confident in what he’ll do, knowing this is what controls his future.

While he’s flying, he hears something that stands out. It’s not too much at first but then it starts blaring and he looks down at the control panel to see a warning flashing. One of the side panels had been blown off. He doesn’t remember making a side panel be torn off, so he ignores it for the time being. 

It’s only later when he’s about to land that it becomes important. The side panel had exposed important parts of the ship and those had corroded as he kept flying. Lance slowly descends and other parts of the ship start to fly off. His landing speeds up and Lance feels himself start to panic. 

The simulation ends after the plane crashes into the surface below, the simulator shaking violently before coming to a sudden stop. Lance sits there for a few moments to catch his breath, then he slowly climbs out and waits for them to tell him how horrible he was and to get out before he can embarrass them even more. 

All Iverson says is a loud “next!” that is almost worse than being told how terrible he did.

 

Later that day, the results for the pilots are posted. They’re divided into two parts - fighter and cargo - with only the top performers becoming fighter pilots. 

Lance walks alone to the results when, luckily, no one else is around. He has to fight down his disappointment when he realizes his exact place. 

He was one place away from being a fighter pilot, one single place away from his dream. He wants to cry or yell or do something about how he feels, but he can’t have anyone else see him break down like this, so instead he goes to his room and leans on Hunk’s shoulder as he lets everything out. 

Hunk, as always, is the best friend anyone could hope for and he comforts Lance as he needs it. 

 

Later that week, the teams for their second year are posted and everyone goes to see who they’ll be paired with. 

The first year had basically been an elimination round and everyone who wasn’t fit was eliminated from the Garrison. 

Lance almost chokes when he sees that he’s not a cargo pilot anymore. Keith Kogane, the top of the piloting class and someone Lance had mentally dubbed his rival of sorts was no longer on the list, instead completely missing, as if he was never there. As such, everyone in the piloting class had moved up a space and he, Lance McClain, had become a fighter pilot. 

His luck only got better when he sees that Hunk is his engineer and he turns to his best friend to exclaim the good news. The other person on their team is one Pidge Gunderson, who has impeccable timing. 

Lance is in the middle of his Victory Dance when Pidge is introduced, acknowledges them as teammates, then leaves again, just as quickly, but it doesn’t put a damper in Lance’s good mood.

Everything is going well for being stranded in the middle of a desert.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have to thank my best friend for helping me write this. I hope you enjoyed reading it! Tune in on Friday or Saturday for Part 3 aka seasons 1 and 2 of Voltron as summarized by a ten-thousand year-old ocean spirit who thinks space is about as far away from a natural source of water as possible.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have not seen season 7 yet so please no spoilers!

PART III

 

Everything in the simulation was going fine until Pidge distracted him and caused him to accidentally take out a wing. It wasn’t his fault at all. Unfortunately, Iverson doesn’t seem to think that way and pins the blame on him. He wants to explain everything, but stays quiet as Iverson yells at him. 

Later, when it’s just him and Hunk, he suggests that they get Pidge and go to the city and party it up with some girls. Hunk sighs. “Lance, you know Pidge probably doesn’t want to go to the pool.”

“Even if he doesn’t, it’ll still be nice and relaxing for us.” Lance grins.

Hunk enjoys the pool too and agrees with Lance that they should do it. “Just don’t try going after curfew again, remember last time that happened?” They both shudder at the memory of Iverson finding them halfway through their journey in their swimsuits, towel in hand, with the guiltiest expressions. Lance was just glad they didn’t call his family.

“Not after curfew.” He agrees.

Of course, with the new year of Garrison homework piled on them, it’s only after curfew that they finally have the time to leave. When Lance knocks on Hunk’s room, the door opens to a terrified Hunk. “Not after curfew.” He says harshly. “We agreed.” But Lance had already grabbed his hand and led them halfway down the hallway, his jacket stuffed with his swimsuit billowing behind him.

“We’ll be stealthier this time.” He says, bending down to escape the window in the wall and inching along it until it ends. “We won’t get caught.” 

Hunk looks like he’s about to argue, but stops as the sound of footsteps and an ever-looming shadow start to approach them. “Lance!” He whisper-yells, pulling his friend to evade the oncoming figure. They watch in horror as the person walks past them.

“Where is he going?” Lance whispers to Hunk, both of them in awe that their teammate would dare be out past curfew. Their eyes meet and they nod, agreeing to follow Pidge. 

Pidge takes them all the way to the roof, where he sits down with his backpack and starts putting together a complex machine. Lance motions for Hunk to stay back as they watch their teammate work for a while. Only moving in after a while of nothing particularly interesting happening.

He grabs one of Pidge’s headphones and pulls it off of his ear, much to Pidge’s surprise. They both know that it’s mean to go through Pidge’s things, but neither Hunk nor Lance can resist messing with their usually uptight teammate. 

They stop to let Pidge explain why he’s out there; something about aliens and Voltron. He doesn’t get far into his explanation when a spaceship falls to the surface and the Garrison goes on lockdown.

Pidge instantly gets to work hacking into cameras on the ship and finds that Takashi Shirogane is in there. Lance grabs binoculars to watch the outside as many Garrison workers covered in suits break into the ship. Tensions are high as Shiro’s words are ignored by the people that have come to “rescue” him and Lance’s suggestion to go in and help him is cut off by the sound of explosions.

Everything escalates at the sight of Keith and Lance lunges off of the roof, Hunk and Pidge closely following him. “Lance!” Hunk yells at him, trying to get him to come back instead of running into a closely watched government-occupied spaceship that just randomly fell from the stratosphere. 

Lance doesn’t listen to his friends and runs into the ship to come face-to-face with Keith. Garrison workers that had come in were already knocked out around the interior, he notes with distaste. The sight of a spaceship falling to the ground had sparked something in him and he remembered his promise to protect the earth. Being bested by Keith in arriving on time had made Lance even more determined to prove himself. He grabs Shiro’s arm and gives Keith a withering glance. “Nope. No, you - No, no, no. No, you don't. I'm saving Shiro.” 

“Who are you?” Keith reponds, wary of the newcomer.

“The name’s Lance. We were in the same class at the Garrison.”

“Really? Are you an engineer?”

“No, I’m a pilot! We were like rivals. You know, Lance and Keith, neck and neck.”

“Oh wait. I remember you. You’re a cargo pilot.”

“Well, not anymore. I’m fighter class now, thanks to you washing out.”

“Well congratulations.”

Their banter is interrupted by Hunk who alerts them to the new wave of Garrison workers that have come to stop them. “We have got to go.” He says, looking at Keith’s vehicle. “Do you mind if we catch a ride with you?”

Everyone clambers on Keith’s vehicle, continuing to argue and complain much to Keith’s apparent displeasure.

Escaping is relatively easy with a suicidal pilot driving you, Lance thinks as Keith careens them off of a cliff. Fortunately, the move prohibits their chasers from following them. Keith maintains their course in the desert until a small shack appears in the distance. Lance feels a longing for water, but forces that down to better focus on the current state of affairs.

Keith tells Shiro about what he did after he was kicked out and how he found a bunch of lion carvings in stone; he also finds that Shiro is no help in discovering what happened due to his memory being too hazy to remember anything. Pidge takes charge in introducing everyone, but stops when he sees Hunk searching through his backpack. “Hey, give me that! What were you doing in my stuff?”

“I-well, i was looking for a candy bar. But, then, I started reading his diary.” Hunk looks embarrassed.

“What?!” Pidge yelps.

“And I noticed the repeating series of numbers the aliens are searching for looks a lot like a Fraunhofer line.”

Keith narrows his eyes. “Frown who?”

“It’s a number describing the emission spectrum of an element, only, this element doesn’t exist on Earth. I thought it might be this Voltron. And I think I can build a machine to look for it, like a Voltron Geiger counter.” Hunk uses hand motions to demonstrate his idea.

Lance loves it. “Hunk, you big, gassy genius!” 

Hunk goes into more detail explaining what will happen and then he goes straight into building the machine with their limited parts. Everyone accompanies Hunk on his mission to find the source, insistent beeping from the machine telling them that they found it. The place is covered in carvings and Keith tells them that this is what he was talking about earlier with the lion carvings he had found. 

As usual, Lance admires the elegance the carvings display and can’t help but run a finger along the wall. All of the carvings start to glow with a blue tinge. “They’ve never done that before.” Keith comments.

The ground beneath them starts rumbling and breaks away beneath them. They scream as they travel down the slippery slope; even though he doesn’t stop screaming, Lance realizes that this is water. He relishes the feeling of being back in his natural element and misses it the moment he’s back on dry land.

They’re in a spacious room with the sound of water echoing off of every surface. It reminds Lance so much of his home, but it also feels so alien to him. The weird feeling is probably from the big blue lion in the corner though, he thinks. 

“This is what’s been causing all of this crazy energy out here. Looks like there’s a force field around it.” Keith comments.

Lance can’t shake the alien feeling and no matter how much he moves, the lion in the corner is practically calling out to him. “Does anyone else get the feeling this is staring at them?”

Keith is the one to not stay on subject at all. “I wonder how we get through this.” He examines the force field from a distance.

Looking between everyone in their group, Lance steps forward to make a decision. “Maybe you just have to knock.” He grins and knocks on the field. It opens and the lion within moves with a lifelike energy. “Uh, did everyone just see that?”

Hunk is the first to respond. “Voltron is a robot. Voltron is a huge, huge, awesome robot!” He breaks into a grin.

Pidge, too, sees the possibility within it. “And this thing is only one part of it! I wonder where the rest of them are.”

“This is what they’re looking for.” Shiro dissolves the excitement of their discovery, only to be followed by Keith’s small “Incredible”.

They climb into the lion to look at it from the inside. Lance instinctively sits in the pilot’s chair, surprised when it moves forward to accommodate his size for flying it. He grabs what he believes to be the controls and moves them around a bit. The lion lurches out of the ground and flies within range of the Garrison. Going back to the Garrison is a definite no, so Lance does his best to get away from it. 

The lion shoots upward, everyone screaming around him. They pass an unusual spaceship that turns around once they passed it. A large weapon is pointed at them, so Lance tries to put on boosters to make them fly faster. Everything shoots by them and they quickly leave the solar system, much to Pidge and Shiro’s astonishment. 

Throughout the excursion, Lance feels a presence in the back of his mind telling him what to do. At first he was wary of it, but as he continued to fly, he began to feel more connected and trusting of it. When a large wormhole opens in front of them, everyone voices their opinion on flying through it, but Lance explains that they should go through it. As the senior officer, the decision lays on Shiro’s shoulders.

They go through it.

 

Hunk pukes once they’re out of the wormhole. No one complains too much about it, only about where they’re going next.

“I don’t recognize any of these constellations. We must be a long, long way from Earth.” Shiro says solemnly.

Lance can feel a distant tug in the back of his mind that seems to pull them toward something that feels like home. “The lion seems to want to go to this planet. I think… I think it’s going home.” Everyone leans in to get a better look at where they are. “Guys, personal space. Hunk, your breath is killing me.”

“Is it just me or is anyone else having second thoughts about flying through a mysterious wormhole? Why are we listening to a robotic lion anyway?” Hunk’s anxiety makes it’s telltale appearance as the situation delves more into the unknown.

Wanting to calm his friend down, Lance says “It got us away from that alien warship, didn’t it?”

“I don’t know if you noticed, but we’re in an alien warship.” Keith, ever the optimist.

Lance feels vaguely annoyed by his comment. “Oh, are you scared?”

“With you at the helm? Terrified.” Keith doesn’t spare him a glance. 

Shiro’s leadership skills take charge. “Alright, knock it off. No one’s happy to be in this situation, but we’re here now. If we want to get through this, we’ve got to do it together.” He tries to establish a common ground for them to build a makeshift team to understand what’s going on.

“So what do we do?” Pidge inquires.

“First, we find out where we’re headed.” He sighs. “Lance?”

His connection to the lion had become even more distant than before and when he tries to see if it’s there, nothing responds. “I… don’t know. I’m sorry. The lion’s not talking to me anymore.” An evil plan develops in his mind. “Wait! Wait, wait, wait! Shh! Listen. I think I hear something.” Everyone’s attention is focused on the mysterious sound that no one fully recognizes where it’s coming from. 

“I’m hearing it too.” Keith says.

Hunk attempts to describe it for those who may not have heard it. “It’s uh - It’s kind of a - a high-pitched squeal?”

Lance’s grin is the sign they were waiting for. “Come on, Lance!” They chorus, groaning at his joke.

With everyone distracted, Lance had time to look ahead and make the connection with the lion again to see where they’re going. “But seriously, there’s a castle up ahead.” He reassures them and swiftly lands the lion in front of the large doors of the looming castle that open as they approach.

They cautiously move into the castle and begin to explore the dark, spacious interior. “Hold for identity scan.” A bodiless voice echoes throughout the space, to the surprise of everyone. 

“Why are we here?” Shiro asks loudly, “What do you want from us?”

The lights turn on and lead them down a path to a circular room with pod-like structures protruding around the center. “It’s… some kind of control room.” Pidge guesses.

One of the pods open and a beautiful woman with long white hair and an exquisite dress falls out. “Father!” She gasps, reaching out as if to grab an unseen body.

Lance catches her. “Hello.”

She looks up, confused. “Who are you? Where am I?”

He grins, unable to resist the perfect set-up. “I’m Lance. And you’re right here in my arms.”

“Your ears.” She narrows her eyes.

He suddenly becomes extremely self-conscious of his ears. Was there something wrong with them? Had he unknowingly transformed them? Were they now too big or too small? He knew he should’ve looked in a mirror before leaving to make sure everything was still the same. It wasn’t that long ago that he finally fixed his height to match Lance’s and he could’ve accidentally shrunk again or messed up his ears. What is wrong with his ears? Would looking at them be too obvious? In his panic, he looks back at his ears and finds nothing out of the ordinary with them. Thoroughly confused, he looks back at the woman. “Yeah?”

“They’re hideous. What’s wrong with them?” She grabs his ear.

He yelps. “Nothing’s wrong with them! They heard exactly what you said about them!” He screams again as he’s flipped into an uncomfortable position with the woman pinning him.

“Who are you? Where is King Alfor? What are you doing in my castle?” She demands answers.

Lance has never felt so terrified in his life. “A giant blue lion brought us here! That’s all we know!”

“How do you have the Blue Lion? What happened to its paladin? What are you all doing here?” She pauses. “Unless… How long has it been?” Her grip on Lance loosens a bit and he squeezes out of it.

Shiro comes to their rescue. “We don’t know what you’re talking about. Why don’t you tell us who you are? Maybe we can help.”

She sighs, accepting his response. “I am Princess Allura of Planet Altea. I’ve got to find out where we are and how long we’ve been asleep.” No one questions her decision as she moves to the center console in the room and places her hands on it, making it glow with power.

“Okay, that’s how that works.” Pidge mutters.

The other person that had come out of a pod gasps when Pidge speaks, as if finally noticing that they’re there. “Enemy combatants!” He moves to intercept them, groaning. “Quiznak! You’re lucky I have a case of the old ‘sleep chamber knees.’ Otherwise, I’d grab your head like this-” he mimics putting someone in a headlock “-wrap you up like so-” his hands move with no apparent direction “-and one, two, three-” he snaps. “Sleepy time!”

While watching him, Lance felt a sense of wisdom within his humor and decides to amuse him further. “Well, before you did that I’d-” he moves his entire body to make it look like he’s doing a really cool and dangerous move. “Like that.”

The other man beams. “Really? How could you do that when I’ve already come at you with this?” He crouches and mimes viciously poking someone with his hand.

“Man, these guys are good.” Hunk says. Lance can never tell if he’s being sarcastic or not.

A loud beeping from the computer forces everyone to stop what they’re doing. “It can’t be.” Allura looks at the computer with a devastated expression.

“What is it?” The other man asks.

Allura turns to him with tears in her eyes. “We’ve been asleep for ten thousand years.”

Lance mentally tunes out of the rest of the conversation, noting that Altea had been destroyed and that Zarkon, the ruler of the Galra, had destroyed it. He sympathizes with them as he himself had been alive for over ten thousand years as well. He knows he can’t possibly tell them that he understands, and then he realizes that he doesn’t. They had been asleep for ten thousand years; they are still the same people they were ten thousand years ago, mentally, physically, and emotionally. However, he had been awake for all that time. Everything had run chronologically for him while they had this ten thousand year gap. He doesn’t know what it feels like to be told that he had missed the past ten thousand years and everything had changed in that time. Over the past ten thousand years, he had simply been exploring, learning, training, and protecting the Earth. He faces the two Alteans - Allura and Coran, his mind supplies - and they feel more like strangers than before. He pities them.

“Princess, you must eat. It’s been ten thousand years.” Coran coaxes Allura.

“I’m not hungry.” She replies, determined to keep her regal act.

Lance feels like he needs to break the solemn atmosphere. “Man, ten thousand years? That’s like one thousand plus ten.” He jokes.

“That’s… time ten.” Keith stares at him.

“Whatever, dropout.”

“I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I’m starving.” Hunk shares.

Pidge snorts. “Yeah, but you’ve thrown up, like, five times.”

“Hmm, good point.”

Shiro has been staring at them in awe. “I can’t believe your civilization created such advanced technology ten thousand years ago. It must have been an incredible place.”

Coran smiles softly at him. “Yes, it was… but now it is gone and we’re the last Alteans alive.” He moves to comfort Allura who is sobbing in the corner. The sounds of her tears are interrupted by squeaks from below as four mice emerge from an opening in the wall.

Allura gasps at the sight of them “Looks like we’re not the last, after all.” Her small bout of joy ends as alarms blare across the room.

“A Galra battleship has set its tracker to us!” Coran announces.

Allura looks visibly unnerved. “How did they find us?”

Lance glances at Keith. “I’m not sure, but I bet it’s Keith’s fault.”

“Say whatever you’ve got to say to make yourself feel better. After getting us stuck on the other side of a wormhole!” Keith huffs back.

That plan backfired on him faster than Lance expected. “I’ll stick you in a wormhole!” He yells back after being unable to think of anything else.

Shiro, of course, calms them down. “Stow it, cadets! This is no time to place blame. It’s time to work as a team.” He looks to Coran. “How long before they arrive?”

“At their speed? Oh, well, carry the two… I’d say probably a couple of days.” Coran answers.

“Good. Let them come!” Allura growls. “By the time they get here, you five will have reformed Voltron, and together, we will destroy Zarkon’s empire!”

Reform Voltron? Destroy Zarkon’s empire? There’s no time for that. They’ve been gone from Earth for too long already. Lance needs to get back there to make sure everything hasn’t been destroyed. And what if Zarkon’s army came and the Voltron wasn’t there to save it. Allura could find other people for this, can’t she?

Lance is broken out of his contemplation as Allura once again puts her hands on the middle console and a hologram of the universe displays itself throughout the room. Little lions are scattered around the hologram with different coordinates showing where they are.

“The Black Lion looks like it’s in the same location as the Blue Lion.” Pidge points out.

Coran grins. “Look at your primitive synapses firing away in their little brain cage.”

“Very observant.” Allura congratulates him. “That’s because the Black Lion is in the castle.”

“To keep the Black Lion out of Zarkon’s hands, King Alfor locked it in the castle. It can only be freed if the other four lions are present.” Coran explains.

The Princess’s gaze travels around all of them. “As you have found, the lions choose their pilots. It is a mystical bond and cannot be forced. The quintessence of the pilot is mirrored in his lion. Together, they form something greater than science can explain. The Black Lion is the decisive head of Voltron. It will take a pilot who is a born leader and in control at all times, someone whose men will follow without hesitation. That is why, Shiro, you will pilot the Black Lion.” The small form of the Black Lion moves over to where it’s hovering near Shiro. “The Green Lion has an inquisitive personality and needs a pilot of intellect and daring. Pidge, you will pilot the Green Lion.” Like the Black Lion did previously, the Green Lion now hovers near Pidge. “The Blue Lion-”

The Blue Lion is already hovering near Lance. “Hold up, let me guess. Takes the most handsome slash best pilot of the bunch?” He grins. 

Allura is not impressed. “The Yellow Lion is caring and kind. Its pilot is one who puts the needs of others above his own. His heart must be mighty. As the leg of Voltron, you will lift the team up and hold them together.” The Yellow Lion figure hovers near Hunk who grunts questioningly. “The Red Lion is tempermental and the most difficult to master. It’s faster and more agile than the others, but also more unstable. Its pilot needs to be someone who relies more on instincts than skill alone. Keith, you will fly the Red Lion.”

“What? This guy?” Lance feels betrayed. He has good piloting skills too and since he’s so much older than everyone, his instincts are much better than others. 

“Unfortunately, I cannot locate the Red Lion’s coordinates yet. There must be something wrong with the castle. After ten thousand years, it might need some work.” Allura tries to keep it light, but the underlying sadness is still there.

Coran laughs. “Don’t worry, we’ll find it soon. They don’t call me “The Coranic” for nothing. It’s because it sounds like “mechanic.” So… Coranic, mechanic. It’s not - It doesn’t sound… exactly like it. It’s similar.” 

They know what puns are, but everything became so awkward, no one wanted to tell him that they got it.

Allura looks back at them. “Once all the lions are united, you will form Voltron, the most powerful warrior ever known, the Defender of the Universe.”

Hunk rejoices, then he comes back down to earth. “Wait. Okay, we're going to be in there and flying lions. Got that part. How do lions turn into legs? Also, is this going to be a long trip? Because I have to pee. Do you people pee?”

“We don’t have much time. Pidge and I will go after the Green Lion. Lance, you take Hnk and get the yellow one. Keith, you stay here. If you locate that Red Lion, go get it.” Shiro’s reality check calms Lance more than he would admit.

“In the meantime, I’ll get the castle’s defenses ready. They’ll be sorely needed.” Allura says.

As everyone moves to do their separate tasks, Coran explains that the wormholes they’ll pass through to get to the lions will only be open for a certain amount of time and if they close before they get through them, then they’re stuck. “So if you do get stuck, they could be relaxing places to live out the rest of your lives. Well, enjoy the trip!” He finishes.

Lance isn’t relieved at all after the last bit. As a spirit, he wouldn’t ever die. But as an ocean spirit, he may need water and the ocean to stay alive. He starts to worry about being in space and where he’d get water. He hopes there’s a pool or at least some showers on the castle if they’re going to be stuck there for a while.

 

In the Blue Lion, Lance and Hunk are having an excellent time with many of the lions’ alarms constantly screaming at them. The planet the Yellow Lion is located on is not friendly at all, they found. A mine had been set up on it with many defenses that are now pummeling them. 

“I thought Coran said these planets were peaceful!” Hunk screams as another hit rocks them.

“Maybe ‘peaceful’ means something else in Altean!” Lance yells back.

Hunk groans as he moves to check where the lion is. “According to the coordinates, we’re right on top of the Yellow Lion. It’s below there, where they’re mining for the ore. THey don’t even know the lion is there. Or maybe they just got here and they’re digging for the lion? What do you think, Lance?”

Lance’s aggressive flying isn’t enough to keep them safe. “Who cares? Just go get it! I’m dropping you down there.”

“Me? Down there? No. No, no, no.”

“Yes, I’ll cover you!”

“No, what if the Yellow Lion doesn’t work? What - what if I can’t get in the mine? What if I start crying? It’s too late, I’m already crying!” Hunk wails.

Lance knows how Hunk feels, but he’s too exasperated to help him. “Sorry, no time for questions.” Then he opens the lion’s mouth and Hunk rolls out onto the planet’s surface. He turns back to face the drones and keep them away from the mine opening as best he can. The lion holds a lot of power, but by itself it will soon be overrun by the sheer amount of defense systems in the mine. If there were water somewhere, he could probably control it to assist, but there doesn’t seem to be water anywhere near. He relies on the lion for many things, not too surprised when many of the things the lion does isn’t fully controlled by him. A few lucky shots has him cornered by a small army of drones and he knows that he’s done for. “Oh, no.” he whispers. The drones fire on him, but the ground in front of him bursts and a large yellow lion emerges.

“You okay, Lance?” Hunk asks.

He can’t begin to explain how relieved he is. “Hunk! I thought you were dead! You jumped in front of all those shots to save my life!”

“Well, actually, I was trying to get out of the way. Thankfully, what this lacks in speed, it more than makes up for in armor. Man, can it take a beating!” Hunk laughs as more enemy fighters come. “Ooh. We’ve got incoming!”

They move to avoid getting hit even more as Allura tells them to hurry.

“Let’s get out of here!” Lance yells, making the lion go as fast as it can.

Hunk groans. “Not this again.”

“Quit screwing around, Hunk! The wormhole is closing!”

They barely make it through and the wormhole closes right after they arrive at the castle. “That was a nightmare. I almost puked out there. I felt like Hunk!” Lance whines, the experience had really rattled him.

Hunk frowns. “Think how I felt. I am Hunk!” 

“Did we find the Red Lion yet?” Shiro asks the question no one really thought of.

“Allura just located it.” Coran says. “There’s a bit of good news and bad news. The good news is, the Red Lion’s nearby. The bad news is, it’s on board that Galra ship now orbiting Arus. But wait, good news again. We’re Arus!” 

Coran’s happy demeanor isn’t enough to phase Shiro’s seriousness. “They’re here already?”

“Yes. Guess my calculations were a bit off. Finger counting is - it’s more of an art than a science.” Coran seems sheepish at being caught. 

The large screen in the room becomes dark with the face of an alien. “Princess Allura, this is Commander Sendak of the Galra Empire. I come on behalf of Emperor Zarkon, Lord of the Known Universe. I am here to confiscate the lions. Turn them over to me, or I will destroy your planet.” Then he screen goes blank again as the image leaves.

“Alright, let’s not panic.” Shiro says in a poor attempt to keep everyone collected.

They instantly dissolve into panic with everyone worrying about what will happen. Their individual arguments soon form into teams that are either for staying on the planet and not abandoning Arus or leaving the planet and saving themselves. 

“Sendak could destroy the planet then come after us anyway. Staying is our only option.” Keith presents a strong argument.

Lance, already stressed from earlier and now even more stressed at the entire fiasco, doesn’t have anything strong enough to counter that than what he’s said before. He doesn’t want to sound like a broken record does he? “Here’s an option: shut your quiznak.” He still doesn’t understand some things about social interaction.

Keith glares at him. “I don’t think you’re using that word correctly.” 

“What do you know, Mullet?” Lance growls.

“We’re staying.”

“Leaving!”

“Staying!” Pidge agrees,

“Snake!” Hunk yells in confusion.

“Guys, stop!” Shiro exclaims. “Princess Allura, these are your lions. You’ve dealt with the Galra Empire before. You know what we’re facing better than any of us. What do you think is the best course of action?”

Allura’s eyes widen. “I… I don’t know.”

“Perhaps your father can help.” Coran smiles.

“My father?” Allura follows Coran to another section of the castle while everyone else stays in there, the tension from earlier still hanging in the air and causing silence to cover the room until the return of the Alteans.

When they finally return, Allura has a spark of determination in her eye that ignites a fire of confidence within her. “You five paladins were brought here for a reason. The Voltron Lions are meant to be piloted by you and you alone. We must fight and keep fighting until we defeat Zarkon. It is our destiny. Voltron is the universe’s only hope. We are the universe’s only hope.” 

“We’re with you, Princess.” Shiro cheers.

Allura guides them to a fancy room with five stations, each housing a different color of armor. “Your suits of armor.” She says elegantly.

The new paladins rush over to their respective places to admire and put on their armor, each excited about what will happen.

At the entrance of the room, the two Alteans stand and watch them. “Princess, are you sure about this? They aren’t exactly the best and brightest the universe has to offer.” Coran expresses his worry.

Allura steels herself again. “No, but they’re all we’ve got.”

Once the paladins are suited up, Allura shows them the weapons they will receive. “The bayard is the traditional weapon of the Paladins of Voltron. It takes a distinct shape for each paladin.” She passes them to the paladins.

The moment Hunk grabs his bayard, it turns into a large gun. Hunk gasps in astonishment, then groans at the weight of it.

Keith’s bayard forms into a simple, but efficient sword. He swings it a few times, impressed.

Lance has trouble guessing what his bayard will be. In the past, he had mostly relied on magic for offensive and defensive power. His weapon wouldn’t be anything too complex or noticeable, he thinks. The bayard shifts into a small gun and Lance laughs at just how perfect it is. “Woo!” He exclaims.

Near Lance, Pidge’s bayard had turned into... something. Lance comes over to check on Pidge and stops when he sees the bayard. “Aw, you got a cute little bayard.” He teases, the comment turning into a scream as the cute little bayard shocks and stabs him.

“Yeah, it is pretty cute.” Pidge smirks.

While everyone was checking out their bayard, Allura had told Shiro that there wasn’t one for him. He brushed it aside easily, opting to discuss the plan in detail instead. Hunk and Lance are meant to “give themselves up” while the others make their way inside the ship and get the Red Lion. After that, the Hunk and Lance team disable the ion cannon and everyone escapes. 

Keith is still unsure about the ship. “That’s a pretty big ship. How are we gonna know where the Red Lion is?”

“It’s not a matter of ‘we.’ It’s a matter of ‘you.’” Pidge explains.

“Pidge is right.” Hunk confirms. “Once we get you in, you’ll be able to feel its presence and like track it down.”

Lance tries to help. “Yeah. You know how you felt that crazy energy while we were in the desert?”

“Yeah. You made fun of me for that.” Keith deadpans.

“And I’m proud of that,” Land confesses, “but turns out it’s exactly like that mumbo-jumbo.”

As the cherry on top of the sundae, Allura reminds Keith how careful and respectful he has to be since the lion is extremely temperamental.

The decoy team take their positions outside the Galra ship. Lance connects the Blue Lion’s communication to the Galra’s. “Attention, Galra ship. Do not fire. We're surrendering our lions.” Lance turns it off. “Hope this works.” A hangar on the ship opens. “Pidge, what’s your ETA?” He asks quickly.

“We’re in.” Pidge replies over the comm.

A powerful beam comes out of the ship. “What’s that thing?” Hunk yelps.

“I think that’s our signal to get out of here!” They move their lions out of the beam’s way and start to circle the ship. “Hunk, you dismantle the ion cannon while I take these jerks on a space ride!” 

“Ten-four!” Hunk responds as he goes to hit the cannon. “What the quiznak? What is that? A force field?”

Meanwhile, Lance flies aimlessly around the ship, destroying things as he goes to deal as much damage as possible. “Whoa-ho-ho! Yeah, buddy! This is way more fun without Hunk's barfing!” He moves freely, space producing no resistance to the lion’s movement like water usually does. Their movements are swift and nimble as they fly and Lance finally understands what is so great about flying.

The Red Lion bursts out of the ship. “Let’s get the heck out of here!” Lance yells, piloting Blue back to the castle and hoping everyone follows.

Hunk flies after Lance. “I hope I stopped that cannon. I could barely make a dent in it.”

 

Back at the castle, the lions form a semi-circle around the lair of the Black Lion. At the presence of all of them, the door opens and a much larger lion steps out and roars. The other lions roar with it in response. 

The castle alarms start ringing to signal the approaching Galra.

“Oh, quiznak!” Coran shouts.

“Sendak is entering the Arusian atmosphere. We need Voltron now!” Allura yells, basically commanding the paladins to stop the Galra.

As the paladins race to join the fight, the ion cannon on the ship blasts the castle and the particle barrier protecting it barely holds up. 

“The barrier gets weaker with every blast. Once that shield goes down, the castle will be defenseless.” Coran alerts them to just how desperate the situation is,

“I can give you cover with the castle defenses for a while, but you have to form voltron now or we’ll all be destroyed!” Allura shouts.

Hunk grunts. “Jeez, no pressure.”

“Listen up, Team Voltron!” Shiro gathers their attention. “The only way to succeed is to give it all you’ve got! This looks bad, but we can do this! Are you with me?” The other paladins voice their agreement and then immediately start to wonder how exactly to form Voltron. Their ideas are quickly shot down and the Alteans’ defenses aren’t getting any stronger. “Maybe if we fly in formation, we'll just combine. Take off on my cue. One, two, three, Voltron!” Their formation is perfect and their confidence is boosted by the mutual feeling of something important happening. Unfortunately, the feeling is them being pulled in by the Galra. Just as quickly, their confidence unravels into panic.

“No! We can do this. We have to believe in ourselves. We can't give up. We are the universe's only hope. Everyone is relying on us. We can't fail! We won't fail! If we work together, we'll win together!” Shiro practically screams the pep talk and a round of “Yeah!”s follow.

To the astonishment of the Galra and Alteans alike, Voltron is formed. 

“I can't believe it!” Keith gasps.

“We formed Voltron!” Pidge squeals.

Hunk yells ”I'm a leg!”

Lance is slightly confused on how everything happened. “How are we doing this?” Could it really have just been feeling connected?

Shiro seems to share his sentiment. “I don't know, but let's get that cannon!”

They yell as Voltron wrecks the Glara ship’s cannon and then the entire ship. Allura and Coran’s cheers are background noise as Voltron disbands and flies back to the castle.

“Good work, paladins.” Allura congratulates them with a hint of gatituity.

Shiro exhales. “We did it.”

“Heck yeah, we did.” Keith agrees, a small smile playing on his lips.

“How did we do it?” Shiro asks the group.

Hunk ponders that for a moment. “I was just, like, screaming the whole time. Maybe that did it.”

Now that everyone is safe and sound in the castle again, Allura is all business. “We won the battle, but the war has only just begun. I’m afraid Zarkon will not stop until he gets these lions.”

“Good thing you paladins know what you’re doing, because you’re going to have to form Voltron again and again.” Coran attempts to lighten the mood.

Hunk nods. “Totally. Wait, what?”

“We barely survived forming Voltron this one time.” Lance interjects, confused and amazed at how effortlessly the Alteans decide to put this group of… kids into an intergalactic war against a super-powerful empire.

“And you only had to fight one ship. Wait until you have to fight a whole fleet of them! It’s not going to be easy being the Defenders of the Universe.” Coran gives them a mischievous smile.

Shiro raises an eyebrow. “Defenders of the Universe, huh? That’s got a nice ring to it.”

Lance stares at Shiro for a moment. Is he really agreeing with this insane plan because it has a nice ring to it?

 

The paladins are given rooms in the castle and Lance has the time of his life exploring everything the room has to offer. Thankfully, there’s a shower and he spends at least forty minutes in it just soaking. He finds bottles of things with labels in a language he can only assume is Altean that look suspiciously like shower products and he decides to smell them to identify what he should use them as. After his long shower, he realizes he could’ve gone to Hunk or Pidge and asked to chemically identify them somehow. He shrugs to himself. Lance finds the comfiest bathrobe with matching slippers he’s ever seen and decides that he’ll wear nothing but this from now on. He falls asleep with headphones broadcasting relaxing music and wakes up feeling refreshed. Going back to the bathroom, Lance discovers what could be called face moisturizer and he decides he’s hit the jackpot. His old friend had shown him how to create and apply the perfect face mask and he does exactly that now. 

Walking into the control room, Lance finds everyone else already there and staring at him with disgruntled expressions. “Good morning, everybody. What’s going on?” He yawns.

Allura glares at him before addressing the others. “Coran and I have been up for hours getting the castle back in order. We had to run a test on the alarms, and we decided to test you as well. Guess which one failed.” 

Hunk rescues him from any more embarrassment. “Hey! You got to sleep for ten thousand years, man. Monday night, I was on Earth. Now, I’ve flown through space, fought some evil alien named Zarkon, and eaten goo in some weird castle.” He pauses briefly, “That’s a lot to process, uh… I-I don’t know. What day is today?”

“It’s the third quintant of the Spicolian movement. Hump day!” Coran supplies.

“It’s a lot to process.” Hunk finishes.

Allura sighs. “You must understand the stakes of our mission. Over the last ten thousand years, the castle picked up distress beacons from the following locations.” The space hologram from the day before appears again, this time many coordinates are listed with distress signals. “We have to assume that Zarkon has conquered almost the entire known universe.” She points to a place far away, but not too far. “Earth is here. An attack on your planet is inevitable.”

The happiness from earlier dissipates. Lance is meant to protect Earth, he must go back especially if an attack is sure to come. He doesn’t know how to communicate the urgency of it all, but he supposes that the Alteans will keep track of what planets are attacked. Putting all his trust in them is hard, but there’s nothing else he can do about it.

“Our mission is to free all those planets.” Allura continues. “Coran and I are getting the castle ready to leave Arus. During that time, you have to learn to form Voltron, so we can begin fighting Zarkon.”

Shiro nods. “The Princess is right. Let’s get to our lions and start training.”

They move to their lions with a small amount of opposition from Pidge, but eventually all of them arrive outside the castle in their lions. “Feel the bond with your lions and your fellow pilots until five become one unit and you form Voltron!” Allura yells. Everyone cheers and strats to fly in formation, doing their best to feel the bond. Lance finds the connection he’s felt so many times before and traces it back to Blue. He grins and does his best to increase the bond between the lion and him, trying to also chase the bond from yesterday from when Voltron was formed. It’s not there.

Flying around eventually gets boring and they go back to the ground for suggestions on how to make Voltron. Keith offers actually building it, cheerleader pyramid style. That doesn’t work and Allura gets the great idea to turn on the castle’s defense system on them to get them back into battle mode. They manage to sneak in after a while and lounge on couches in a new room.

“You did it! You formed Voltron!” Allura cheers when she finds them all there.

Keith frowns. “No. The shooting stopped and the particle barrier shut down, so we just flew in.”

Shiro comes to the room and berates them for taking a break. He and Allura team up to convince them to train instead and Coran’s hint of there being a training deck solidifies their pact as they force everyone to train.

A flurry of team building exercises result in fails from the group. First, everyone is knocked down by drones. Then, the maze simply makes Lance annoyed and electrocuted. After that, the lion bonding didn’t go as planned and both Lance and Keith ended with sand in their hair. Finally, they are all gathered in the training deck and given a device to wrap around their head. Coran tells them that it’ll read what they’re thinking and project it in front of them. During the exercise, Lance can’t help but think about the McClains. They had done so much for him and he doesn’t know if they know he’s in space or if they know what happened to the real Lance. He’s brought out of his thoughts when they’re told to focus on forming Voltron and he shifts his mind to Blue. They never get that to work, so the Alteans try to have them fight The Gladiator. That fails too.

All out of options, Coran handcuffs them to each other during dinner. “This one's a classic.” He grins. ”You get to feed each other, like a pack of yalmors!” 

Eating like that is hard at first with everyone accidentally throwing food at each other. It soon breaks out into a food fight with everyone tossing food at separate sides: the Alteans vs the Paladins. They all laugh as it continues and Allura gasps when she realizes what’s happening. “Enough! Do you see what you're doing? You're finally working together as one!”

They all cheer at that and agree to try and form Voltron again. This time they are met with success.

 

The days are filled with training for the inevitable battles against Zarkon. Forming Voltron is much easier now, but working together as Voltron still needs a lot of work. During their food break, a local Arusian comes to the castle and while Keith is wary of him, everyone else welcomes him openly. 

“Greetings. We know you’re there. No harm will come to you.” Allura greets him.

“Wait!” Keith sohuts. “He could be dangerous. Drop your weapon!” He threatens the Arusian, pulling out his own sword.

“No one takes Klaizap’s weapon!” The Arusian grunts.

“Keith, put that away!” Allura scolds him and turns back to Klaizap. “Please, kind sir, accept my most humble apologies.”

Klaizap looks to her in wonder. “I am Klaizap, bravest of our warriors. Our village is over Gazrel Hill. I come seeking answers as to why the Lion Goddess is angered with her followers.”

Confusion spreads through the paladins. Lion Goddess? Followers? Did he mean Voltron? 

Allura looks kindly to the Arusian. “You have not angered the Lion Goddess.”

“How can you be certain?” He asks.

“Because I am Allura and this is my castle.” She smiles.

Klaizap gasps. “Lion Goddess!” He bows in her presence.

Allura laughs politely. “Please, bravest warrior, take us to your village so that we may meet our neighbors.”

“What about our mission to get off this planet and fight Zarkon?” Keith hisses.

“Part of the paladins’ mission is to spread peace and diplomacy.” She says. “Arus has been our host for ten thousand years. These people deserve our thanks.”

They follow Klaizap to the Arusian’s village and watch as they welcome them.

One Arusian steps forward. “Oh, Lion Goddess, I, King of the Arusians, formally beg your forgiveness. Please have mercy on us and accept our traditional Dance of Apology as atonement for our wrongdoings.” Another Arusian is pulled to the front and starts what looks to be a very painful dance.

Visibly confounded, Allura tells them that they don’t have to do this.

“Moontow, halt!” The king yells and Moontow stops at a very uncomfortable place. “The Goddess has refused the apology. Start the sacrificial fire. We must throw ourselves in.”

Lance almost chokes. A sacrifice? Allura hadn’t refused it and yet they still do this. He watches in horror as they move nervously to be sacrificed. A wave of fear washes over him like a distant memory.

“No!” Allura yells. “No sacrifices!”

The king looks back at her with hopeful eyes. “So, we may proceed with the dance?”

“That’s a better alternative.” She agrees and the dance continues. Once the dance is over, Allura manages to help the Arusians come to understanding that she’s not angry with them, simply trying to save them.

They’re almost finished with the Arusians when a robotic beast falls from the sky and threatens to hurt the small village. Shiro reacts first and tells everyone to get to their lions to take it down and save the Arusians. 

The monster is vicious and wields a power-filled orb that easily knocks Voltron down more than once. The paladins don’t know just quite what to do, this is only their second time fighting something of Zarkon’s and the first was lucky. This time, they have to be careful to keep the Arusians safe and defeat the monster. After they get knocked down again, Shiro remembers something vital to taking it down. “That sound... I recognize this monster from my time in Zarkon's prison. I know how to beat him! Listen, there's a loud sound when the orb returns to the base of the weapon, and every third time, that orb needs to charge up. That's this monster's weakest point. That's when we strike.” Until the orb charges up again, they are stuck on defense. Pidge summons the shield to help protect them, but it doesn’t hold up as strongly as they had hoped. The second strike hits and the shield almost breaks; they start asking how to fight the monster once it’s charging.

“When I attacked him before, I had a sword!” Shiro yells, trying to see if that will help in any way.

“Orb! Orb!” Hunk screams.

Pidge yelps. “We can’t take another hit like that!”

“Wait a second, guys!” Keith sounds like he’s discovered something. “I think my lion’s telling me what to do.”

Lance understands having the lion speak to you mentally. It’s more of a mental push in the right direction than actual talking, but it has the same effect. “Well whatever it is, hurry up and do it! He’s about to fire his third shot!”

The orb rushes at them again and they manage to not get hurt too badly before running in toward the monster. A sword appears in Voltron’s right arm and quickly slices through the monster, eliminating it. 

 

Allura allows the Arusians into the castle for a small party. As a thank you, the Arusians put on a performance for the paladins commemorating their victory over the monster. “Thank you, Your Majesty, for that.. wonderful production. It saddens me that we must leave tomorrow, but we must continue our battle with Zarkon and spread peace throughout the universe. Your Highness... please accept this gift.” She hands him a small device. “This will allow you to contact us anytime you need help. Arus will be the first planet in the Voltron Alliance.”

Hunk watches the Arusians cheer. “We ought to get something like that.” 

“Like what?” Lance asks.

“You know, like, a cheer.” Hunk says, using more hand motions to emphasise his point. “Like, a team cheer that we do.”

Team cheer? How are they supposed to come up with a team cheer? The only people present are Hunk, Keith, and him and the only cheer he knows is the most basic one. Then again, he thinks as he looks at the other two, they might not know any better ones. “Mhm. Yeah, okay. How about, uh… ‘I say “Vol” and you say “Tron.”’ Vol!”

Keith looks confused as he thinks about it. “Uh… Voltron?”

“No!” Lance is surprised at how horribly he interpreted the directions. “No, no, no. The cheer includes the instructions. I say ‘Vol’ and you say…”

“Vol… tron?” Keith tries.

It takes Lance a while to remember that after being kicked out, Keith had been living on his own. Even before that he had little to no social interaction. He can see how it might be a slight bit confusing. “We’ll work on it.” He promises, taking a sip of the drink Coran gave them earlier and immediately spitting it out again. “Coran, what is this?”

Coran bounces over. “Oh, this is Nunvoll, the nectar of the gods!”

“It tastes like hot dog water and feet.” Lance is horrified. What kind of gods would come near such disgusting substances?

Coran merely laughs. “Yeah, makes a wonderful hair tonic as well.” 

Lance looks down at the liquid. It might be better to use it rather than drink it, he thinks as he retches the rest of it into the cup and looks back up to see that Keith had left. “I guess we should get used to this space juice. Who knows when we’ll get back home again?”

Hunk snorts. “Yeah, if ever.”

“What do you mean?” Lance pauses.

“I mean, if this Zarkon guy has been ruling for ten thousand years, how long do you think it will take for us to fix it? You know, if we live.” Hunk elaborates.

Lance nods softly and swallows. “Right. That.” He needs to get out of there.

Hunk notices his strangeness and tries to lighten his mood. “Hey, what do you think the chances are of us landing on a nacho planet?”

This is the moment he’s been waiting for. If he manages to play up the homesick act, he can get out of there and think about how exactly they’re going to defeat Zarkon and stay alive while doing it. “Well, there’s only one planet with Veradero Beach, pizza shack looking over the water and the garlic knots and my mom’s hugs…” He sniffs a bit to add a small dramatic touch. “I’m sorry. I think this Nunvil is getting to me. I gotta go.” Lance feels bad about leaving Hunk standing there, but acting the way everyone expects him too and constantly keeping the same mannerisms in place has worn him out. He needs rest and contemplation so he goes to the control room and sits there, looking across the large hologram galaxy.

His thoughts are interrupted by Coran. “Mind if I join you?”

Startled at first, Lance decides being homesick is a good cover. “How far away from Earth do you think we are, Coran?”

“Let’s take a look.” Coran jumps to his feet and points at the hologram. “Earth is over here. And we’re all… the way… over…” The hologram takes a long time to reach them.

“You ever notice how far the planets are from each other, Coran?” Lance asks, never noticing it before. He had rarely looked up at the sky from Earth and when he did, everything looked much closer together.

Coran huffs out a small laugh. “Yes. Haven’t you been paying attention?”

“Yeah, but I mean, like, they’re really, really far away. Like, say, Earth. It’s so far, I can’t even see it. The… the blue oceans, the white clouds, green grass… I… I can’t see any of it.” 

“You miss Earth. I understand. I miss Altea.”

“I know we’re supposed to be brave paladins and Defenders of the Universe or whatever, but, honestly? I just want to go home.” As much as it hurts to admit, that’s the truth. Lance doesn’t want to defend the universe, he wants to go back to Earth, his home, and protect it like he had promised to.

“If I could go home, I would.” 

“I miss rain and splashing in puddles.”

“Rain?”

“Yeah. It’s water that falls from the sky.”

“Oh, we had that on Altea. Only, it wasn’t water, more like rocks. Razor-sharp and boiling hot. Oh, they could knock a hole right in your head.”

No matter how disturbing the image is, it still brightens the atmosphere. “Sounds fun.”

“Yeah.” Coran sighs.

A drone flies in unexpectedly, but they recognize it instantly. “Hey, Rover.” Lance greets as the drone flies upward toward the large crystal in the ceiling. “Wait. Where’s Pidge?” He realizes what’s happening too late. “Coran, look out!” He yells, making the split-second decision to jump onto the Altean to shield him from the blast. The vague noises of people calling his name fades as everything goes black.

 

Pidge is in the room. He knows that much. Something about a hologram trick. He opens his eyes slightly and is almost blinded even with the lights as low as they are. The figure of a Galra soldier greets him and he regains enough feeling to aim his bayard at him and shoot before he falls back from the raction. “Lance, are you okay?” A voice rings out as an arm steadies him.

He can barely tell who’s helping him in his delirious state, but he does know that they’ve most likely won this battle. “We did it. We are a good team.” He whispers. Everything dissolves into darkness once more.

 

Waking up in a pod is something new to Lance. Once the door opens, he steps out, slightly wobbly, and walks over to where everyone is gathered. “You guys having a clock party?” He asks, confused with the scene he was presented with.

Hunk moans. “Aw, Lance, you just ruined it.” He stops when he comprehends what’s going on and wraps Lance in a hugh. “Hey, Lance!”

“What happened?” Lance grunts.

Allura kindly places a soft hand on Lance. “We can tell you all about it while you get something to eat. Are you able to walk?”

“Talking? Eating?” Even though he knows she would never imply it, it sounds suspiciously like… “Are you asking me out on a date?” Lance can’t keep the smile off of his face as everyone sighs.

They relocate to the dining hall and Lance is given the full story from both the paladins and the mice. “Wow. Thanks, everybody.” He feels gratitude to everyone for doing so much while he was passed out, except Keith of course. “Sounds like the mice did more than you, though.”

Keith stiffens. “I punched Sendak!”

“Yeah, apparently after I emerged from a coma and shot his arm off.” The sarcasm pierces Lance’s tone.

“We had a bonding moment.” Keith yells. “I cradled you in my arms!”

Bonding moment? So Keith was the one who helped him after shooting Sendak. Still, the memory is too hazy to be sure so he settles with blatant denial. “Nope. Don’t remember, didn’t happen. So, what happened to Sendak?”

Allura explains that Sendak is being kept in the castle and Hunk pushes for everyone to go back to the Balmera and help Shay and the other Balmerans. 

“Wow! You are really hung up on this lady.” Lance laughs.

Hunk turns red. “No, it's not like that. Look, guys, when you see how Zarkon has treated these people and destroyed their home... they've been under his thumb for so long, they don't know what it is to be free. It's up to us to set this right. This is what being a paladin of Voltron is all about. It's time to man up.”

Shiro stands. “Then let's get moving. Time to go defend the universe.”

The paladins all move in the direction of the lions before Pidge stops them. “ Wait, I have something to say first. I need to come clean. And I'm afraid this may change the way you all think about me. Just so there are no secrets between us anymore, I can't ‘man up.’ I'm a girl. I-I mean, I can ‘man up’ because that's just a figure of speech. I don't have to actually be a man to ‘man up.’ I just have to be tough. But what I'm saying-”

Lance had heard of spirits that pretended to be something completely different from what they actually are to lure people to their death. As far as he knows, humans only have one gender at a time, so Pidge can’t be a girl if he’s a boy, but… “W-W-Wha...?! You're a girl?! How?!”

Everyone laughs and congratulates Pidge on telling them her secret, going back to work right after. Pidge’s confidence is renewed by their support. “It’s good to get that off my chest. Now, let’s launch this castle-ship!”

“Wait, what? Pidge is a girl and the castle is a ship?” None of his questions are being answered. “How long have I been out?” Lance is the only one in the dining hall, so he runs to meet up with everyone in the control room as Coran and Allura power up the castle and launch it into space.

It isn’t long before they receive a distress beacon and have to part from their original plan of going back to the Balmera first, much to Hunk’s displeasure.

“The Paladin Code states that we must help all those in need.” Allura reasons.

“Wow! This is so cool.” Lance exclaims. “It’s like we’re space cops on a space patrol. Coran, do we have a siren we can turn on?”

Coran gives him the most excited look. “Uh, no, but we could record you making a siren noise and broadcast that to them.”

“Perfect!” Lance begins to make the most annoying siren noise he knows, and is stopped by Shiro seconds into it.

“No, not doing that.” 

The rest of the flight to the beacon is uneventful and they land next to a small ship and a few people. Coran is ordered to stay and guard the ship while the others go to help.

“You don't know how glad we are to see some friendly faces. Most folks don't want to get tangled up with anyone who's on the run from the Galra.” One of them says, a friendly but suspicious vibe coming from him.

Keith raises an eyebrow. So, you guys are fighting the Galra?”

He laughs. “Well, I don't think Zarkon is exactly quaking in his boots at the three of us, but we do what we can. I'm Rolo. This is Nyma, and our cyber-unit, Beezer.”

“Hi.” Nyma says, waving a little. Lance can feel something stirring in his chest, but he’s never been good with emotions so he can’t tell if it’s affection or suspicion. No matter what, he has to keep his facade of being easily attracted to people and right now, Nyma is his best target.

Lance slides over to Nyma. “Hi! Name’s Lance.” Nyma smiles sweetly at him and he names the emotion in his chest.

The paladins talk with Rolo for a while to find out what they can about how to help. During the entire exchange, Hunk had been nothing but rude to them and though it quenched some of his suspicion, Lance still felt the need to calm him down a little. “Mind your manners. There are ladies present.”

Shiro sighs at Lance as Hunk turns to him almost threateningly. “Oh, I’m sorry, oh but does anyone remember the last time we let our defenses down? Someone kind of set off a bomb. Remember, Lance? You were almost killed.”

Lance can’t die - at least he hopes he can’t - but Hunk does provide an excellent argument. “Oh, yeah.” He replies meekly, seemingly defeated.

“Hunk’s right.” Shiro addresses Rolo and Nyma. “Sorry, but we have to be cautious.”

Thankfully, Rolo takes it all in stride and everyone gets to work, allowing Lance to talk to Nyma alone. “ I mean, there are only five of us in the entire universe, so I guess you could say it's kind of a big deal.”

“I don't understand.” Nyma says curiously. “The lions are ships? Are they, like, flying statues that you ride on?”

Lance laughs. “No, no, no. They're magic, but also super scientific and advanced. And they fly crazy fast and have all these incredible weapons. Really, the entire Castle is just insane. I wish you could see it.”

“Yes, it's too bad we're not allowed inside. I would love a tour from one of the knights. But I guess the big one is in charge, huh? You have to obey his orders?” 

Lance recognizes the basic manipulation, but decides to go along with it. “Who, Hunk? I don't have to listen to him!” He scoffs and gets up to lead her to the wonder that is the castle. 

“This place is incredible!” She exclaims, her features lighting up in wonder.

Lance shrugs. “Yeah, I guess. You get used to it.”

“But it's so gigantic. It must take you forever to get to your lion.”

So she wants the lion. “Ooh, you'd be surprised.”

They laugh and cheer as they ride to the Blue Lion on the crazy contraptions the castle was designed with. Once they’ve gotten to Blue, Lance finds that there’s not enough room for both of them, so Nyma lays across his lap.

“Pretty slick, right?” He grins at Nyma, trying to keep the urge to push her off at bay.

Nyma gazes around the lion. “Unbelievable! Take me on a ride around the moon?”

He can’t handle any more of her baiting. “We should probably get back to the others.”

“Yeah, you're right. Maybe Keith will give me a ride.” She sighs.

Keith would most certainly never give anyone a ride, but his entire personality could be destroyed by Nyma if he doesn’t go along with it. “No! Hold on a second! I mean what's the point of having the lion if you can't enjoy it, right? Giddy-up, buddy!”

They fly around for a while before Nyma finds something interesting. “Look, a kinetic spring! Let’s land over there. The minerals reflect off the water, making a rainbow.”

Is a kinetic spring a real thing? “Wow, is there anything you don’t know?” Lance lands Blue near the spring Nyma pointed out. A small tree stands next to it and Nyma’s focus shifts from the spring to the tree. “Uh... So, you want to see how fast I can climb this tree?” Lance asks, wondering if this will be worth it.

Nyma giggles. “Aw, you are cute. Let me show you something. Give me your hand.”

His suspicion is skyrocketing, but he still gives her his hand. She pulls him against the tree and binds him to it. “Whoa. This is kind of…” He looks up and watches as Blue is pulled into Rolo and Nyma’s newly fixed ship with a mixture of panic and guilt. “Nyma, what's going on?”

“Sorry, Lance. Maybe we’ll meet again.” She gives him a sad smile as she disappears into the ship.

The plan to trap her had horribly backfired on him, but at least he has evidence that they can’t be trusted. “Oh, quiznak.” He mutters when he realizes his helmet is out of reach. Straining to grab it multiple times, the thought of simply increasing his height crosses his mind before he finally manages to grab his helmet and patch himself in to the comm link. “Guys? Hello? Little help?” He hates being so pathetic.

“Lance?” Shiro asks. “Lance! Are you alright? W-what’s going on?”

Lance sighs. “Well, I’m kind of chained to a tree.”

“I knew it!” Hunk yells.

“And I think Nyma and Rolo just stole the Blue Lion.”

“I knew it!”

“Where are they?” Shiro interrupts.

“Uh, space?” Is all Lance can answer.

Hunk starts to rant. “Uh, I never trusted those guys, right from the beginning! I mean oh at first it was just like a feeling in my gut, you know,, but when I was replacing that pipe, the pipe was cracked, but none of the hardware around it was damaged.”

“Okay, we get it!” Keith says, trying to stop Hunk from continuing.

”I mean if the thermal pipe is cracked, then, obviously, hello, the entire assembly should be totally roasted.”

“Okay! We get it.”

“We should've had to replace the entire undercarriage of that reactor. So, right then, I was, like, positive. Foul play.”

Everyone is annoyed with Hunk by now. “Okay, we get it!”

Due to his lion acces being nonexistent, Lance has to sit and wait for the others to come and help him. It isn’t long before Keith shows up. “Hey, Lance, i got your lion back.” He isn’t too hostile this time; Lance finds himself able to tolerate Keith for once.

“Thank you, Keith. Now, can you come and unchain me?” He asks, hoping that Keith’s gentle attitude will stay present long enough to unchain him.

“What’s that? I, uh… you’re cutting out. I can’t… I can’t hear you.” Keith teases.

“Oh, come on! I thought we bonded.” All of his respect and former toleration is gone; however, he still needs to get out of these. “Keith? Buddy? My man?” He asks to emptiness. Maybe he’ll just have to make his hands a bit smaller so they can fit through.

 

Back in the castle, the paladins discuss their plan for going to the Balmera. They easily digress into what laser guns sound like, even Shiro gets in on it. Allura is the one to get everyone back on track and they find that saving the Balmera is much harder than they anticipated: the Balmera is alive, so they can’t harm it, plus Galran forces are stationed there, so they have to defeat them too.

Lance and Keith are, unfortunately, partnered up to stop the Galra forces. The two of them don’t get along at first, but after a while of having to work together, their teamwork helps them find and destroy the main Galra center of operations. 

Coming back to the surface, they are greeted by the Balmerans, the other paladins, and, after a short break, another one of Zarkon’s robotic monsters.

“We need to draw its fire away from the Balmera’s surface!” Shiro yells the exact words everyone was thinking and hoping wouldn’t be true. That means that every hit they take can’t be allowed to hurt the Balmera too. They can’t fall or crash or do anything to hurt the Balmera. 

The new monster is trickier than the one before, with new weapons that deliver more damage than they can withstand. Voltron keeps fighting to distract the monster from the Balmerans desperately trying to escape the dying planet. Suddenly, the ground beneath them starts collapsing. The Balmera, in its weakened state, cannot support the surface any longer. 

Hunk finds a way to summon a gun for Voltron that arms them with enough power to defeat the monster in time for Allura to help the Balmerans finish an ancient ritual that rejuvenates the Balmera’s life source. A large crystal forms around the monster to keep it from crashing to the ground, and the paladins watch in awe at the amazing power of the Balmera. 

The Balmerans return to their lives, now free from Galra control, and the paladins wistfully return to the castle and leave.

 

The castle has become somewhat of a second home to the paladins. Other than Shiro being unnecessarily paranoid about what could happen, Sendak’s body being connected to it doesn’t make too much of a difference. That is, until the castle starts acting weird.

First, Lance is helping Coran clean the healing pods when he gets stuck in one. Then, he walks down a corridor only to have all of the lights mysteriously go out on him. The nail in the coffin is when he hears a noise near an air-lock, goes to check it out and is locked inside of the chamber. Then it opened on him and he was almost sucked out into the endless void of space. Lance still doesn’t know if he would survive in space or not; the amount of water he receives everyday has kept him from drying out so far, but he isn’t sure what would happen if he stopped.

Keith saves him and they spend a moment just breathing together on the wall and processing what happened. They end up agreeing on telling the others and demanding an explanation, but they discover that Allura is piloting the ship into a dying star instead. 

With tears in her eyes, Allura breaks free from the castle’s illusions and says goodbye to her father for the final time to stop the terrors the corrupted AI thrust upon the castle. No one knows quite what to say, but Allura thanks them for being understanding and carrying on his legacy of Voltron. 

Lance is stunned by how strong Allura is and wishes he could do more, but he has never experienced such loss. At least, none that he remembers.

 

Pidge is able to extract information from Sendak’s memories to aid them in understanding the Galra empire better. The main information? A Galra base.

“We need something to work with.” Keith says impatiently. “Right now, we don’t even have a decent map of the empire.”

Map? Why would they need a map if the empire is so large? Lance thinks. “Who needs a map? After ten thousand years of conquering, I could probably fire my bayard at like any random point in space and hit a Galra ship.”

Shiro understands what they should be looking for much better than anyone else. “If we could just find troop locations or supply routes, small targets we could hit-and-run, then we could start to free planets one by one.”

That is a stable plan, but also a plan that would take too much time. “Boring.” Lance decides. “I want the big kaboom.”

“Zarkon’s been building his empire for ten thousand years. We’re not going to tear it down overnight with five inexperienced pilots and one support ship. Hitting him where he lives would be a huge mistake.” Shiro reasons.

Pidge stops their banter with news. “Okay, I've cross-referenced Sendak's memories with the info I got from the downed ship back on Arus. Most of it was a garbled mess, but one thing kept repeating, something called a ‘Universal Station.’”

“Universal Station? Like, the kind of station that controls the entire universe?” Hunk wonders aloud.

Pidge thinks about that. “Well, we are translating it from Galra, so it could also be ‘Galactic Hub.’”

Lance grins. “Or ‘Space Base!’” Everyone glares at him. “What?”

“I'm pulling up the location of your Universal Hub Station Base on our screens now.” Coran announces.

Lance can’t see it anywhere. “So... where is it?”

“I don't know. Our long-range sensors are unable to find anything at those coordinates.”

“Maybe he remembered it wrong.” Keith suggests.

“Or maybe we just stumbled across a top-secret base in Sendak's memories.” Pidge exclaims.

Allura looks closely at the coordinates. “Only one way to find out. Let's go take a look.”

They find a base at the coordinates and park the castle somewhere where the Galra wouldn’t be able to find it. The paladins are instructed to get into the base’s control room and download as much information as they can on the base and the empire. Before they could start, Keith spies a mysterious person and decides to follow them, much to the disapproval of the others. 

Allura volunteers to personally infiltrate the base for more information, but Shiro demands to come with her for more backup. Once they’re in, the information extraction begins and Pidge manages to hack into a Galra sentry for even more info. 

Everything falls into place as they are forced to leave as soon as the information is done downloading, meeting Keith as he barely escapes.

“Where’s Allura?” Keith asks Shiro.

The lack of a response alerts Lance to something having gone wrong. “Shiro?”

“She sacrificed herself to save me.” He breathes.

“So, she’s still on that ship?” Pidge inquires.

Hunk’s eyes widen. “The ship that’s headed to Zarkon’s Central Command?” 

“The place that’s way too dangerous for us to attack?” Keith finishes.

“It doesn’t matter how dangerous it is.” Lance decides that the look in Shiro’s eyes is enough to make him agree with anything the man says next. “We can’t let Zarkon get Allura.”

“But you said going there would be a huge mistake. You said for us to attack that place head-on would be the dumbest possible thing we could ever do.” Hunk bravely supplies.

Shiro leaves no room for questions. “I know. But now we don’t have a choice.”

 

Their rescue mission for Allura is made hastily and without much thought. The plan revolves around them being able to sneak by the fleet by using a wormhole to jump to a gassy planet for cover as they get into Zarkon’s main base. 

After they’re past the fleet, Voltron readies to fight Zarkon. However, they’re met with someone that’s not Zarkon and are overpowered. To save themselves, Voltron is forced to split into the individual lions. 

Shiro runs into too many problems and he is forced to evacuate the Black Lion. To protect him, Keith tells everyone to save Allura without him and proceeds to attempt a fight with Zarkon himself.

Lance cannot believe how absurd this is. They’re told that they must save Allura, but when it comes to actually saving her, Keith and Shiro would rather fight the bad guy. At least Pidge and Hunk are still helping him save her. Not everyone wants to ditch their teammates.

The three of them have a grand old time destroying Zarkon’s fleet and locating Allura. Hunk finds her first and slams his lion into the ship containing her. 

“Hunk!” Allura yells, surprised to see him.

“We’re going to get you out of here.” He replies, determined.

“What are you doing here?” She asks as her thoughts make themselves known. “Tell me you didn’t bring Voltron straight to Zarkon’s central command! Where’s the Black Lion?”

They rescue Allura and try to find where Shiro has gone. Their search takes them inside of Zarkon’s main ship where the witch from earlier torments Shiro. Grabbing him, they run out as fast as possible and yell at Keith to retreat as well.

A wormhole neglects to appear with the many Galran signals prohibiting it from being created and the paladins start to panic. The Galra shields abruptly fall and the castle is able to escape and create a wormhole to lead them to safety. 

Lance has no time to ponder why the shields fell as the wormhole loses its stability and the paladins are whisked out of the castle and dropped at various places around the wormhole.

 

When he hits the planet’s surface, Lance knows that he’s in water. He can feel the gentle flow of power swirling around Blue and he almost convinces himself that he’s back home. But everything is different. It’s like walking into a house that was made with the same floor plan as yours, but nothing is the same except for that. He recognizes the ocean, but is suddenly wary of the waters outside. This is a new planet and it wouldn’t recognize him. Or would it? “Hunk, you okay? Hunk?” He asks for his friend, anything to distract him from how much he wants to step outside and swim.

The familiar sound of puking reaches his ears. “I’m fine.” Hunk replies.

“You just threw up, didn’t you?”

“Yeah. You would too if you got sucked out of a wormhole at light speed, then crash-landed on an ice planet and ended up underwater.”

“That is what happened to me!”

“Oh, right.” 

Something swims past them and Lance decides to go outside to check it out, Hunk follows nervously. “I can’t believe this! We’re really chasing a mermaid.” Hunk squeals.

The mermaid rushes ahead and they struggle to catch up to her. Lance can’t connect to the water so he can’t use it to help his cause. “Hey, wait, wait, wait! We’re friendly!” He yells to make the mermaid at least slow down.

She does and turns back to them, curious. “Hello.” 

Hunk and Lance stare at her, wondering what she’ll do next. That next movement is turning back around and continuing on her journey, apparently. But it looks like she wants them to follow her now, so they do.

She takes them to a large, underwater village. “Welcome to my village. Here, all are safe and warm.” She says in a way that makes Lance want to turn around and get out of there as fast as possible. Still, he stays and goes where she goes. “I am Florona.” She introduces as they come closer to a large castle. “The almighty Queen Luxia, keeper of our land, you love to meet with you.”

Hunk doesn’t give it a second thought, but Lance can’t help but notice that something is a little off. “Wait. How did your queen know we were here?” Is this ocean able to communicate with its inhabitants in a way Lance has never heard of before?

“Queen Luxia knows all.” Is the simple and eerie answer.

“Lance, I know this mermaid thing is a dream of yours, but we really gotta go.” Hunk insists that they have to leave.

“We will, big guy, we will, but let's meet this queen first.” He has to make sure his feeling of terrible danger is just a fantasy. “Besides, maybe she can help us. And, if I just happen to find the future Mrs. Blue Lion, well, then that is alright with me.” A classic Lance spin and a wink has Hunk agreeing and they swim in to meet the queen.

“Space travelers, I am Queen Luxia. I welcome you to our village as honored guests.” The queen greets them politely.

“The honor's all ours. I'm Lance.” Lance wants to bow, but it might be a bit over the top.

Hunk is serious here. “Uh, Mrs. Queen, Your Honor, Your Excellence, I'm Hunk, and me and my buddy here, we crash-landed on your lovely planet, but we really need to get back in touch with our friends who are in space. Would you possibly have any way of doing that?”

The queen smiles at them. “Hunk, Lance, I can solve all of your problems. Here, we are all safe and warm.”

“You use magic, don't you? I bet this castle's a ship. This castle is a ship, am I right? Just don't say anything if I'm right.” Hunk is out of his comfort zone and it starts to show. The repetition from the mermaids isn’t helping him calm down.

Luxia travels to them with large air bubble. “Here, I've brought you these. The bubble coral will provide you with all the air you need.”

That begins to win Hunk over to her side. “Whoa-ho-ho! Thank you, Fish Queen.”

Lance wishes he could just take his helmet off and see for himself if he would start drowning in these unfriendly water, but he can’t. Not in the present company. “Huh. Cool.”

“And rest assured, your space vessels will be well protected. Now, please, follow me.” Luxia swims to a large garden on the outskirts of the village.

The feeling of terrible danger is coming from here. Lance knows it. “What is that?”

“That is the giver of life to our people, the Baku Garden. When the waters froze over, we were forced to live down here. The garden provides us the warmth and food we need to survive. Because of it, we are taken care of. Here, all are safe and warm.” Giver of life? The queen moves before he can ponder it more and takes them to a large room in the castle that’s filled with food.

Hunk gasps and begins eating. “Your Royalness if I may, this food is amazing. It's even better than Balmeran cave bugs.”

“I'm glad you enjoy it. It was picked fresh from the Baku Garden. And I hope you enjoy the entertainment.” She replies. 

Fresh from the garden? Lance’s head starts to spin a little bit and the dance is squid does isn’t doing any favors to him. “Whoa.” He whispers.

With the food already played, Hunk gets serious again. “So, about us getting in contact with our friends how can you help us?”

Luxia waves him off. “Please, let's discuss that after the dance.”

Hunk watches the dance for the first time. “Whoa, this dance is amazing. It's the...It's the most amazing thing I've ever seen.”

“I'm glad you enjoy it. Put your mind at ease. Let your consciousness drift like the tide.”

“Yes, I will do that. I- were- weren't we just talking about something?”

“You were just telling me how much you like it here, how much you wanted to stay forever.”

“Oh, that's right. Here, we are all safe and warm. Lance, I think we should stay here forever.”

Lance now knows what a bad idea that is, but his mind is groggy and won’t let him think of anything other than being safe and warm. “Okay.”

When he wakes up in the morning surrounded by mermaids with Hunk nowhere to be found, Lance sighs inwardly. “Hello? Good morning. Where am I?” He calls out.

“He’s awake.” A strange voice says, a ways away but not too far.

Then Lance notices just what has been bothering him since he woke up. “Why am I blindfolded? Is this a game? I like games. Wait, where am I? Why am I blindfolded? Is this a game? I hate games!” His mind be much worse than he thought as he starts to ramble.

The disembodied voice speaks again. “It's okay. You were mind-swished, but now we want to-”

Lance knows this feeling. “Kill me? Think again!” He moves swiftly to get to the nearest exit, something he cannot find because he is blindfolded. Something hits him and his panic rises. “Don’t hurt me!” 

“Please, we are not here to hurt you.” The voice from earlier speaks, removing his blindfold. “We brought you here to ask for your help. I am Plaxum.”

The other two mermaids introduce themselves as Blumfump and Swirn, and tell him that he’s their savior.

“You guys think I'm your savior? What do you want with me?” Lance is more confused than he was earlier. Sure, he’s an ocean spirit, but that’s back on Earth. Here, he could be just a normal human and he would never know.

Blumfump takes charge of explaining. “The queen is mind-swishing everyone, controlling their thoughts. We believe you can stop her.”

He can’t wrap his head around what they say. “Wait. Wait a minute. Okay. You're trying to tell me the queen is brainwashing people? But she's so safe and warm.”

“What do you remember from yesterday?” Swirn asks.

Lance tries to recall what happened. “I remember we crashed, saw the mermaids and the village, then we had dinner, and then, uh we, uh…” Why can he not remember?

“You can't remember because you were under her control.” Swirn provides a reasonable explanation. 

Blumfump overrides the sanity in the room with crazy theories. “Our theory is, the queen controls minds by using her voice to strike certain head switches in your ear pan.”

“And her magnetic stare locks on to your eye-to-brain pathway plug.” Plaxum continues.

“Plus, her mind-control sonar is always broadcasting through the waters. Bong! Bong! Bong!” Swirn says.

Plaxum finishes. “She trains her people to use hypnotic movements to lull you under her control.”

“I do remember a dancer.” The theory makes sense, but what about the terrible feeling he got from the garden?

“Good, because I haven't finished my picture for that one. But you see, she was infecting your brain!” Blumfump exclaims.

Infecting his brain? “Holy crow! I had a mind-controlling brain infection!” Lance yelps.

“Sit.” Plaxum commands. Lance listens.

Blumfump isn’t done just yet apparently. “The entire village is under the queen's mind control. The only reason we aren't is because we wear these jellyfish that hide our brains from her powers. It's like we have no brains whatsoever. You can't control what doesn't exist.”

“Right. Of course.” Lance nods.

“Our heads are completely empty.”

“Yeah, I get it.”

“Many years ago, the queen froze over the surface by blocking the thermal vents. She forced everyone to the depths, where she began to brainwash them. They became her prisoners.” Plaxum gives backstory as she measures Lance’s head.

Eight and seven-eighths aquameters? “But what's the point? Why mind-control the mermaids?” Lance asks, officially confused by everything.

“To kill them!” Blumfump yells.

Lance can’t believe that. But he can. “Really?”

“Well, we don't know that for sure, but hundreds of mermaids have disappeared and never come back.” He explains with a somber tone.

Swirn starts again. “We've tried to take out the queen, but failed several times. And every attempt depletes our numbers. Now, there are only three of us left. Without you, there is no hope.”

“Found one!” Plaxum yells from the other side of the room.

Lance still doesn’t know what they’re asking. “What do you want from me?”

“We saw the mer-cat you came in. We think it can stand up against the queen and her forces. But first, you'll need one of these.” Blumfump hands him a jellyfish, expecting him to put it on his head.

“Now, they sting pretty bad and don't smell great.” Plaxum reassures him.

“If my theory is correct, the smelliest ones block the most mind-control rays.” Blumfump attempts to brighten his spirits.

Lance isn’t convinced. “Are you a scientist?”

“No.”

“Also, they can sometimes make your face swell, and you might experience hearing loss.” Plaxum tells him the side effects, something Lance most definitely wanted to hear.

“Would you just put it on, already?” He yells, screaming when it engulfs his head. “It burns!” Why would it ever be a good idea to put a jellyfish on your head, Lance wonders a little too late as his head starts swelling. Could he make it smaller?

“That means it's working!” Plaxum cheers. 

“So, what's the plan?” Lance mumbles.

“Here's what Blumfump came up with.”

Blumfump returns to center stage with picture boards again. “This is you. You act like you're still thought-swirled and get past the guards. Get your mer-cat and grab the queen. We'll mount a full-scale attack on the castle and free the people.” He tosses Lance a small fish. ”If your acting fails you, this holds three doses of antidote to use on the guards. It should interrupt the queen's mind-control long enough for you to escape.” 

Acting failing him? That idea is so preposterous he could laugh. “I don't think I'll be needing this. I missed 14 days of the third grade for a stomachache I never really had.” 

While swimming near the guards, Lance puts on a performance that is far less than he usually enjoys. “Hello, mer-guards! Isn't everything just so safe and warm here? Anyway, I'm off to my lion.” The guards easily see through his ruse and capture him. “Oh, come on!”

“I had a feeling you'd come for your vessel.” Luxia stands over him. “Servant, take Lance to the Baku Garden.” The garden? No, he can’t go there. He absolutely cannot go there.

Spotting Hunk in the room too, Lance tries to alert his friend. “Hunk? Hey, buddy, it's me! Snap out of it! It's Lance!” Hunk has no interest in being friends under mind control and he starts attacking Lance. “Darn it!” He yells, dodging Hunk’s grabs at him.

“Everyone, capture him!” Luxia demands.

Well this escalated quickly, he thinks as Hunk makes more grabs at him. Lance uses the water to his advantage, he knows how to flow through it and so he does. “Hunk, please! I don’t want to hurt you!” He exclaims, the words are authentic and he really does not want to hurt his friend.

“Must keep Queen safe and warm.” Hunk sounds like a robot. The mind control!

Lance grabs the small fish and swims to Hunk, squeezing a dose of whatever is inside to try and snap Hunk out of the queen’s lure.

“Whoa! Whoa! Where am I?” Hunk moans. “What am I doing? Is that a jellyfish on your head?”

Lance doesn’t try to blanket the truth. “Hunk, you've been mind-controlled by the queen and you're trying to kill me.”

“Oh, really? Sorry. My bad.”

“We're kind of in the middle of a battle. So, I'm going to need your help.”

“Got it.”

The trio of mermaids from earlier find them and rush them to the lions. Plaxum stays in Blue to help guide and assist them. 

“What’s the plan?” Hunk asks.

“We need to-” Lance starts.

“We need to grab the queen and take her to an ice prison Blumfump built, where her mind-control powers will be trapped because of the thick ice and the jellyfish.”

“Okay, who's that?” Hunk sounds confused.

Lance sighs. “It's Plaxum. Just go with it.” 

The lions swim to the castle and Hunk notices the queen first. “There she is!” He exclaims, moving down to intercept her.

Lanc reachers her first and pulls her into Blue. “Got her!”

Luxia wipes at her head. “Where am I? What's going on?”

Plaxum is having none of Luxia’s I-don’t-know-what’s-happening act. “What's going on is you're not mind-controlling these people anymore, Your Majesty.”

“What? Mind-control? Me? No! Please, my people are in danger! You must go back!” The queen sounds worried and nothing like the kind of person who just wants to control her people.

“What's going on?” Lance asks, the feeling from earlier pooling into his gut and telling him that the queen isn’t behind anything.

“Nothing! It's a ruse.” Plaxum shouts.

Lance can’t know for sure, after all, he’s one giant ruse himself. “Are you sure?”

“I wasn't controlling anyone.” Luxia gasps. “The Baku!”

“She’s lying!” Plaxum tries, but Lance knows who’s right. He would rather throw himself out of Blue and see whether he can handle the new ocean or not than see if the Baku is behind this.

“Please!” Luxia begs. “The last thing I remember is that organism in the garden falling from space. I went to inspect it. I thought it was a plant.” 

“Wait a second. We've been eating that plant. And it's delicious! It's so safe and warm.” Lance can hear Hunk drooling.

“A-ha! Mind-swishing! It was the plant the whole time. And the queen was the first one to be mind-controlled.” Lance says, suggesting the idea as if he’s confident in it.

“But why?” Plaxum sounds betrayed.

Luxia trembles. “The Baku has been harvesting us all. We are its food source.”

Oh, no. “No way!”

“I think she's telling the truth. Look out the window.” Lance really doesn’t want to follow Hunk’s suggestion, but he still looks out the window. In the open sea, a large eel-like thing roars at them.

Time to fight. “You two get somewhere safe. Okay, Hunk, change of plans. The queen is actually good and that thing is bad. Let's take it out.” The two paladins swim after the large eel and attempt to shoot it with their blasters. After many failures to hit it, Lance realizes that they’re using the wrong tactic. “We gotta stop shooting where the creature is and start shooting where the creature's gonna be.” He takes a shot at the eel and it hits. He celebrates his victory too early as the creature escapes from his blast. Hunk’s lion wasn’t doing well in the water, so Lance is the only one actively pursuing it. Blue whispers something to him mentally. “What?” The lion beeps at him and he decides that it’s now or never and fires. The creature is trapped under rocks as the ocean floor begins to crumble. “This place is coming down! Let's get out of here!” Lance yells, trying to give Hunk extra time to get his lion out.

“Dude, you just dropped a sonic boom on him!” Hunk laughs as they swim away.

Back at the castle, they clear everything up. “So, Blumfump, the jellyfish, the magnetic stare, the hypnotic dance - You got it all wrong. It was the food.” Lance tells him. 

Blumfump merely waves it off. “Well, I did say they were theories. Mer-science isn't always about getting the right answer.”

Queen Luxia stands in front of the trio of mermaids. “I want to thank you all for what you've done. You've freed my people, and I will do all I can to protect that freedom. I vow to be the voice of my people. I beg of you to help. Will you be my advisors?”

Blumfump is delighted at that. “Of course, Your Highness. I have some great ideas. Have you ever heard of electricity?”

Plaxum leaves the group and swims to Lance. “And I wanted to personally thank you, Lance. Mwah.” She kisses him lightly with her jellyfish. Lance groans. “Finally, I can remove this thing.” She takes off the jellyfish to reveal that she’s actually quite beautiful.

Now that there’s no immediate threat, Hunk travels back to his original reason for agreeing to come. “Queen Luxia, the reason we came here in the first place was to see if you could help us find our friends.”

Luxia smiles at him. “Of course. It has been many years since we have activated the energy beacon, but perhaps it is time to rebuild our civilization and reach out to interstellar travelers once again. Activate energy beacon!” A large beam of light is cast from a circle near the castle. “There is a mer-cat in our system that appears to be heading our way.”

“It’s the Green Lion!” Hunk yells excitedly.

“See, Hunk?” Lance boasts his I-told-you-so rights. “I told you they could help us. Now, the next time I go swimming after a mermaid, I hope you won’t be complaining the whole time.”

“Lesson learned.” Hunk laughs. 

Lance wishes he could check if this ocean is similar to Earth’s. He’s been waiting for a long time to see if he could survive in space and now would be a perfect time to test that, but they have to leave and get back to the others. They have to uphold their duties as defenders of the universe.

 

At the castle, their small group discusses what happened and what they should do in the future. Some of Shiro’s missing memories have come back and he is adamant about finding a Galra named Ulaz that helped him escape. He tries to use his robotic arm to find coordinates that might lead to him. 

Everyone becomes increasingly worried about Shiro as he spills the secret that Zarkon used to be the Black Paladin and decides to risk his life to find Ulaz the moment Pidge receives coordinates. “t's worth the risk.” He tells them. “Someone helped me escape. If we can locate some allies in our fight against Zarkon, especially ones from his own side, we might just find a way to take him down.”

Allura accepts it. “We can check the location, but I do not like this. The Galra are not to be trusted.” She pilots the ship to the coordinates Pidge found, but nothing is there. Unsatisfied, Shiro makes everyone wait until he receives a sign. The castle alarms go off.

“I knew coming here was a mistake!” Allura’s rage can’t be contained with the intruder, so the paladins are forced to get them.

The intruder turns out to be a Galra and easily overpowers the paladins. Coran’s commentary of everything only makes it worse for them as they get dragged down by the Galra. When Shiro comes to fight them, the Galra stops and reveals themself as Ulaz. “It’s him!” Shiro shouts. “This is the Galra who set me free.”

Ulaz is allowed access to the control room and he sits with everyone to explain what he was doing there and his intentions. He tells them that he’s part of a society called the Blade of Marmora that’s a group of Galra that fight against Zarkon and leads them to a small outpost they created.

Getting to the outpost is hard because it’s carefully concealed within space, with space quite literally folded over it. Lance has never seen such a thing. It must be magic, he thinks, and yet they have done it with science. Alarms sound to alert them to another one of Zarkon’s monsters that found them. 

“You were tracked!” Ulaz says to Shiro.

That upsets everyone. “What? Us?” Pidge retorts.

Keith glares at Ulaz. “If Zarkon knows we’re here, it’s because you ratted us out.”

Before they go back to the ship, Ulaz gives Shiro coordinates to the Blade’s Headquarters and tells him only to come after he’s found out how Zarkon is tracking him. The paladins all want to stay within the space fold and wait out Zarkon’s monster, but that plan stops working the moment they realize the monster knows they’re there. It’s too late to figure something out and they form Voltron to try and stop the beast.

They can’t handle the sheer power from the monster, and watch as ulaz sacrifices himself to save Voltron. “Voltron is too valuable. The universe needs you.” He says, and then he’s gone.

 

Still shocked by Ulaz, the paladins make much needed repairs to the outside of the ship as they fly through space. They work for a while before flying into a part of space littered with small things of goo and decide to make the most of it. Launching the goo at each other, they laugh and form teams to attack the others. As the fun dies down, Pidge grabs a container to capture a small thing of goo.

When they get back in the castle, she takes out the container and examines the goo. Once she’s done, she calls everyone to report her findings. “I ran the bioluminescent pattern through a variety of code-breaking sequences, including this homemade virtual Turing machine. Of course, I had to make a few tweaks to the original design, because, obviously, there have been several advancements since he designed it. Although, you have to admit, Turing was a shining light in the world of science in an age when far too many were still-”

“Pidge.” Keith interrupts, getting her back on track.”What does it say?”

“Oh, yeah. "Under attack. Galra. Help." And then, there are coordinates.”

“The signal came from Olkarion, home to the Olkari, a proud class of engineers, builders of vast cities that could change shape at the whim of their creators.” Coran says.

Allura remembers them. “They had a seemingly magical ability to manipulate solid metal. With just a wave of their hands, they could build a computer inside a block of steel.”

Already impressed by the Olkari, the paladins collectively agree to help them in whatever way possible. They quickly arrive at Olkarion to find a lush forest covering the planet. “Why doesn't anyone ever send a distress signal from a cool place? I hate the outdoors. Nothing but sunburn and poison oak.” Pidge whines.

The lions seem to be pulled by something from the forest and the paladins can only watch as they land and a small number of Olkari come out to greet them. “We found your distress signal!” Pidge yells to the delight of the Olkari. 

Almost like magic, the Olkari are able to generate advanced machines from the nature around them. Lance stays back to watch as Pidge learns from the Olkari on how to connect with nature and create advanced technology unlike any other. 

The Olkari gather the paladins to tell them of how their King and many of their people have been captured by the Galra and forced to work to build a super weapon. As always, the paladins agree to help free the other Olkari and stop the weapon.

Lubos, the Olkarion king, is found guilty of selling his people to the Galra in exchange for a life of luxury and the Olkari that once worshiped him now regard him as a traitor. Without their king, the Olkari decide to take matters into their own hands and free their people themselves in a large raid of the Galran factory.

To stop the cube, Voltron is formed to cut it up. However, the cube continues to function as the pieces remain operational. Shiro insists that more firepower will stop it, but is proven wrong as the cube simply fires back the same blast given to it. Voltron falls apart.

Lance can hear Pidge saying something about bonding with her lion even more, and when he next focuses on her, the Green Lion is flying around the cube, blasting it with a new weapon that makes it sprout plant roots that destroy it. “Whoa! How’d you do that?” Science continues to impress him with every passing day.

Victory sealed under their belt, the paladins return to the Olkari to congratulate them on freeing their people and the Olkari respond by becoming part of the coalition. They say their goodbyes and leave Olkarion.

Only to be stopped by a Galra fleet waiting for them. Allura activates a wormhole as fast as she can and gets everyone out of there, but the teladuv machine that generates wormholes is broken. 

Coran attempts to catch Allura as she falls from her position, notably tired from everything that’s happened. Unfortunately, he slips on… something and wipes out on the floor too. “Whoa! Are you alright?” Lance asks, worried for him.

Coran is stubborn and blatantly denies anything being wrong with him, especially about something called the “Slipperies”. He runs off to fix more of the castle before anyone else can tell him he has something he doesn’t. 

The rest of the team further discussed their current situation and decided that staying parked and on the lookout would be best. Lance had overheard something about there being a pool and had been dying to check it out for a long time, so on their little break, he knows exactly what he’ll do.

He rushes to the elevator in nothing but his swimsuit and a towel and sighs. Finally, he’ll be able to fully experience being in water in space without being in a potentially hostile ocean.

The door to the elevator starts to close but is stopped by hand shoving it’s way in. “Huh? What the heck do you think you’re doing?” Lance really does not want to share a ride with Keith. Then he notices that Keith is wearing swimming shorts as well and a bout of panic flashes in his mind.

“Allura said there’s a pool. I’m gonna go check it out.” Keith says. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Lance sighs and supposes that he’ll have to make do with Keith being there too. “Same thing.”

“Look, you stay on one side of the pool and I’ll stay on the other, and we’ll be far, far away from each other. Very… far… away.” They settle into a sort of satisfactory silence. Then the elevator breaks.

Looking at each other, they sigh and non verbally agree to work together to get to the pool by walking up the elevator shaft together. The two of them get onto the roof of the elevator, link arms, and push their backs against each other as they start scaling the walls.

“It’s right, then left. You’re off.” Keith grunts.

“You’re off!” Lance instantly retorts, never able to keep his temper down with Keith. “And shoving too hard!” He pushes Keith to annoy him even more.

“You’re not shoving hard enough!”

“I should be at the pool right now!”

“Would you stop whining?” Then Keith stops and Lance almost falls. “Look!” He says, pointing to a vent in the wall. Of course he would want to take a shortcut to the pool.

They climb in the vent, not noticing the instant drop, and start screaming the moment they do. The vent takes them on a ride around the castle and Lance thinks it’s only sheer chance that they happened to arrive in the pool room. 

Something is wrong with it, but neither of them notice since they’re too busy groaning and trying to stand after being disposed on the floor so harshly. “Huh?” The surprise is evident and the pool is on the ceiling.

Lance feels cheated. He needs a pool and this is what he finds? “What the heck?”

“Stupid Altean pools.” Keith grumbles. With the pool out of the question, the new one is how they’re getting out of there. 

 

Zarkon’s fleet found them again somehow. Keith and Lance make it to the control room just in time to start fighting the Galra, but their instruments to fight them stop working so they sit back and watch. The teladuv is still broken and Coran has run off with Pidge to fix more of the ship so there’s nothing any of them can do. Shiro has an idea to go into a cosmic storm cloud to temporarily shield them from Zarkon and Allura happily obliges. 

Inside of the storm, the team creates a new plan to form Voltron and fight Zarkon, then come back to the castle and wormhole out of there. The plan works at first, but the second half can’t be done with the teladuv still broken. 

“Why haven’t we wormholed yet?” Keith growls.

Coran is increasingly stressed. “Because we can’t! We’re missing several scaultrite lens-stones! They’ve shattered! Gone! Doesn’t exist! Sloven-day-ho! That’s Altean for ‘gone’.”

Pidge remembers something. “Wait, did you say ‘scaultrite’? I’ve seen that somewhere before. I think Hunk was making some terrible cookies from that stuff.”

Coran grabs one of Hunk’s cookies. “Unbelievable! These cookies do have trace elements of scaultrite.”

He orders the paladins to come to the teladuv with him and hold Hunk’s “cookies” in uncomfortable positions for the teladuv to work. An epic last minute reach to shine each of the stones is successful and the castle is able to safely wormhole out of the storm and away from Zarkon.

 

Much to everyone’s disagreement, Allura thinks Zarkon’s tracking them through her. “Why would that be so hard to believe? Zarkon's forces showed up on Arus only after I awoke.” She argues.

But Keith thinks differently: “It's not you, Princess Allura. It's me. I just think Zarkon must've imprinted on me during our fight or something.”

Pidge doubts that, but she has no other evidence. “Look, the fact is, we don't know how Zarkon is tracking us. It could be through the Black Lion. Every time Zarkon gets close to it, Shiro has to fight him for control. That's only when Zarkon is nearby.”

“It doesn't matter how he's tracking us because we're gonna take the fight to the Galra soon enough. They've been chasing us from galaxy to galaxy. The last thing they expect is for us to come after them.” Shiro says, forming a plan.

Lance grins, remembering something his old friend used to say. “The hunter becomes the hunted, hmm? Awesome! That's the tagline from like six of my favorite movies.”

To intercept the Galra, they find that a planet not too far from them named Taujeer is home to a Galra base. But when it’s time to leave for the planet, Keith and Allura are nowhere to be found; they had left, thinking Zarkon was tracking the paladins through them. 

At Taujeer, the paladins find that the planet is falling apart from the Galra’s impact on the planet and the natives are attempting to flee in a broken ship. A small plan to help the Taujeerians is formed with Pidge and Lance working to keep the planet together while Shiro and Hunk use their forces to righten the ship’s position. The moment the ship is upright, Hunk works on getting the engines working, but once he’s done, the Galra return and Hunk is left to save the ship while everyone else works to keep the Galra busy. 

The paladins are having trouble fighting the Galra until Keith and Allura return to help. Together, they form Voltron and defeat the Galra, learning that Zarkon isn’t tracking them through either Keith or Allura, but through the Black Lion.

“I’ll have to forge a new bond with my lion. One that’s stronger than his.” Shiro says uncertainly.

Coran will not let anyone rest. “Well, while you’re working on that the rest of us need to find some new teladuv lenses otherwise we won’t be able to travel via wormhole.”

“Does anyone even make those anymore?” Keith asks.

Allura looks pensive. “I don’t know. Only a few Alteans could use the teladuv ten thousand years ago. They may not exist anymore.”

Coran bounces back with an unsettlingly joyful look on his face. “I think I may know where we can get some.”

“Coran!” Allura scolds. “You’re not suggesting going to one of those filthy swap moons! The last time you went, those space pirates took you for everything you had.”

Space pirates? “Space pirates?”

Coran laughs. “The Unilu were traders and pirates that roamed the galaxies and dealt in black market goods. Umvy spice, by-tor water, little bottles of infinity vapor. Of course, you had to bargain. No one could bargain like the Unilu. Last time, I ended up giving away three quarters of my shipment of lango in exchange for a used pogo oscillator.”

“Father was not pleased about that.” Allura frowns.

“In that case, I can’t allow you to get anywhere near those filthy, lowballing Unilu hoodlums. Now, let’s ready a pod for our mission. We need to get in, find the scaultrite tenses, and just get out.” Coran explains.

“Shotgun!” Lance calls, remembering a tradition and using it to his advantage.

“What?” Hunk shouts as Coran leads them all to a pod. Lance grabs the front seat before anyone else could take it and winks to the three paladins in the back. Their course to the swap moon begins.

“Hello? Back passengers? Can you hear me?” Coran broadcasts.

Lance, feeling oddly satisfied, takes this as the perfect opportunity to tease Hunk. “Oh, it’s so comfy up here. Extra leg room, heated seats!” He stifles a laugh as he hears Hunk mutter to himself in the back.

“Now, these swap moons are very dangerous environments. So be on your toes. No weapons or communication devices of any kind!” Coran warns. “Also, I’ve brought along some disguises.”

Disguises peaks Lance’s interest. He knows how to disguise himself just fine, but he’s also keen to see exactly what Coran chose for them. Peeking inside of the bag full of their disguise materials, Lance grins.

They park the pod a short distance from the main building and everyone steps out and gets handed their disguise by Coran. They’re beautifully dressed as space pirates. Lance feels powerful, more so than normally, in his disguise and follows after the others to the swap moon.

“Coran? This Unilu swap moon looks an awful lot like a regular mall.” Pidge comments the moment they’re inside.

The Altean pauses for a moment and takes in their surroundings. “It does seem to be a little cleaner than I remember. Still, be vigilant. The Unilu are cut-throat wheeler-dealers. So keep your hands on your coin satchels.”

“My satchels are empty.” Hunk says.

“Good.” Coran deadpans.

Keith sighs. “Let’s just get this over with.”

“Yes, right. Everyone, let’s fan out, search the area for teladuv lenses. We’ll meet by the giant ticking clock here in one vaga. Don’t be late, and try to blend in.” Coran announces, placing his space pirate disguise in a rubbish bin close to them.

The team disbands; Hunk, Keith, and Coran all going their separate ways. Lance raises an eyebrow at Pidge, the only other person there, and Pidge grins in response. They walk around the mall, looking for the weirdest things they can find and show it to each other. 

Pidge had just found what looked like a pig’s toe covered in caramel when they stumbled across an interesting store. “Can I interest you in the latest Earth fashions?” A salesman asks.

Lance freezes and stares at the store with a protesting Pidge urging him to stop. “Lance, come on! We have to be at the ticking clock in a half hour.” She argues.

“But Pidge, wait, look at all this crazy Earth stuff this alien is selling!” Lance exclaims.

“We're supposed to be looking for the teludav lenses and you're looking in the one store we know for certain won't have-” Then she sees something. “Oh, my gosh! Is that Killbot Phantasm 1? The first journey to the depths of the demon sphere? Oh! Mercury Gameflux Two! With the original power glove that gives you infinite lives if you touch the index finger to the pinky! We have to have this! How much is this?”

The salesman looks slightly surprised that they’re interested in it. “Twelve hundred GAC.”

“Is that a lot?” Pidge asks uncertainly.

“Well, compared to what we have, which is none, yes. It’s a lot.” Lance replies.

Pidge looks determined. “We’re gonna find some money. Come on!” She starts to run away then turns back to the salesman. “Don’t sell that!”

Lance follows Pidge to the nearest fountain and watches as Pidge rolls up her shorts and jumps in. She grabs a handful of coins that were at the bottom and holds them up for Lance to see. He gasps softly and hops into the water, savoring the feeling of being back in water as he grabs coin after coin. Their pockets are near bursting when the fountain is almost empty.

“This tenner looks like the last one.” Pidge announces and they meet briefly to count their haul. “So how much have we got?”

Lance still hadn’t gotten enough to help reach the twelve hundred. “Eleven hundred and ninety-six GAC.”

“We’re so close!” She yells happily. “Lance, look!”

An alien had just come to the fountain to throw some GAC in. “Already on it!” Lance yells, racing to get the GAC by quickly swimming through the water. He watches as it flies through the air and makes a split-second decision to get it from the air, jumping out of the water in a practiced move and clenching the coin between his teeth.

“Yeah!” Pidge yells. “Let’s go!”

Lance follows her, waving the coin in the air. “Thanks!” He shouts to the confused alien.

The two of them run back to the store and buy the game. “Hold on. With every purchase, you get a free Kaltenecker.” The salesman tells them, handing them the floating cow.

“Time to get moving guys!” Hunk’s voice sounds from the hallway and Pidge and Lance look to see Hunk and Keith running towards them.

“Security’s on our tail!” Keith yells.

Lance and Pidge yelp at the sight of the security guard behind them and start running. “Everyone up on Kaltenecker!” Lance pants, jumping up on the cow and helping the others too.

“Did you buy a cow?” Hunk yells.

“It was free with purchase!” Pidge yells back.

They fly the cow over a ledge and keep going towards the meeting point. Coran steps out of a shop in front of them. “There he is!” Pidge shouts, pointing at the Altean.

“We gotta go, Coran!” Keith tells him as he jumps onto Kaltenecker.

“I got the scaultrite lenses!” Coran exclaims happily.

The security guard they thought they lost appears in front of them and they scream, maneuvering around him. “Get back here!” He commands, but they’re almost out of the mall. “Doggone it! You better run! Don't let me catch you in my jurisdiction again, pirates!”

Lance laughs at the meaning behind that. “Oh, so you can't follow us outside, huh?” He teases, turning to look at the guard. Something hits his head and he falls off of the cow, grunting. Who decided to make the ceiling lower at the exit? He runs to catch up with the others at the pod and scrambles inside.

Lance and Pidge exit the pod the moment they’ve landed at the castle and rush to start their game. Everyone discusses important things that Lance barely listens to, too entranced by the possibility of having something from their home to enjoy. Then they realize that there’s nowhere to plug the game in.

 

After their little break, the collective decision is to find the Blade of Marmora headquarters from the coordinates on Shiro’s arm. They discover it very well hidden with only a small period of time to enter and exit the base. Lance volunteers to go with Shiro, curious at what they might have on the Galra and some interesting history that’s missing from their information banks. Slightly miffed when Shiro, of course, chooses Keith to go with him, Lance sits back with everyone else and waits for them to get back. 

The monitor beeps and they look up to see an incoming message from Shiro. “Princess, we're coming back, and we're bringing someone you should meet.”

Interested, the team watches as Shiro and Keith return with a large Galra. “ Princess Allura, it's good to see that the rumors are true. You're still alive after all these years.”

Allura is visibly unnerved. “So is Zarkon. Can we consider you our ally in the fight against him?”

The Galra sighs. “Yes, but we have little time to discuss this. I just received word from our spy inside the Galran hierarchy. They have become aware of our presence, so the timetable for our plan has been moved up.”

“How soon do we need to begin?” Shiro asks.

“Now.” The seriousness surrounding the Galra never leaves, and everyone realizes how important this is. A plan is set up and the paladins are assigned separate tasks. Hunk and Keith find a weblum to get as many scaultrite lenses for a giant teladuv as possible. Lance, Shiro, and Pidge all are told to go the the prison called Beta Traz and break out Slav, a genius engineer for the Blade and resident prisoner there.

The three paladins take the Blue lion to Beta Traz, Lance piloting them. “Alright, guys, we're ready to fire.” Lance announces

“Be careful, you've only got one shot.” Pidge’s voice sounds from the other side of the lion.

Lance laughs to himself, confident in his ability to shoot straight. “Don't worry, Pidge, I'm an excellent shot.” He pauses, thinking that that may have been over stating himself.

“You are?” There’s the doubt.

Lance needs to prove that doubt wrong. “Yes! That's my thing!”

“Since when?”

“Just get ready.”

They approach the prison quickly and Lance ejects his two passengers on a direct path into the prison. He can hear the two of them (mostly Pidge) screaming from the force, but they manage to regain their bearings soon after.

“Beginning phase two of the plan,” Pidge announces. “I'm blocking the sensors. Lance, you've only got four doboshes to scan the base and land your lion before they're back online.”

“Copy that.” Lance scans the base as fast as he can and sends the data to Pidge. His entry point is charted and he lands the lion as inconspicuously as he can. The entire thought of breaking into a prison makes him want to laugh; he’s never suspected once that he would ever do such a thing.

Shiro is the first one to respond. “Okay, phase two complete. Welcome to Beta Traz.”

A map from Blue’s scan of the building is created by Pidge and they look to see what it holds. “It appears the prison is comprised of three concentric levels. Each level is showing different types of security. That's weird. The Blade of Marmora said this prison was made just for Slav, but I'm showing two cells.” Pidge sounds equally as confused as Lance feels. “Who else would be held here?”

“Can you get a visual on the cells?” Shiro asks, possibly hoping to clear the confusion.

“No, not from here. And even if I could, we don't know what Slav looks like.”

“Then we're just going to have to check both.”

Lance feels the tension in the atmosphere and decides to break it. ”Dibs on the closer one!” He yells, much to the annoyance of the other two. “What? My legs are tired.”

Pidge sighs. “I'll go to the command center to try and access the security system.”

“Let's get moving.” Shiro commands. From there, they split to do their separate tasks. 

Lance soon finds that his path is obstructed by a door that will not move. After a quick message to Pidge and a bunch of sneaking around, the door opens and he makes his way to the cell that lies beyond it. 

He is unable to quench the homesickness that hits him the moment he sees a dog-like figure in the cell that reminds him so utterly of a dog spirit he befriended a long time ago. This dog, however, doesn’t seem all too friendly when it starts running toward him. 

“Are you Slav?” Lance manages to shriek as the dog slows.

“Yup.” It says. Lance breathes a small sigh, glad to have that over. “Pidge, I’ve got Slav.” He tells the other paladin, vaguely noticing what seems to be an echo in Shiro’s voice. 

“What.” Is Pidge’s response.

“I said I have Slav.” Shiro sounds annoyed.

Lance is speechless for a moment; Shiro can’t have Slav because he has Slav. “You are Slav, right?” He asks.

“Yup.”

Pidge sighs. “We don’t have time for this. Just bring both of them.” But before she can send them the route out, the communication is cut off. 

“Looks like we’re on our own, Lance.” Shiro says. 

On our own? He must be joking, neither of them know quite where they are or how to get out. “Slav, do you know how to get back?”

“Yup.”

The simple response shocks him: Slav is so composed and confident. “What am I talking about? Of course you do. You’re a genius.”

They walk even more with Lance sharing more about the team as they wander the halls. He is careful not to mention anything about his life back on earth, convincing himself that it’s because he thinks Slav the genius might use it against him and not because he might cry thinking about it. Instead, he tears up a little, talking about how much he means to the team and doubting his worth. 

Slav’s constant ‘yup’s aren’t much help either.

The moment Lance realizes that they’re lost is when Pidge finally reestablishes communication. “Sorry, about that, I’m back.” She apologizes.

“Yeah, can you tell me where I am?” Lance requests.

“Just a sec. Pulling it up now.” She replies swiftly, gasping when another form appears on her monitor. “Lance, look out!”

The sound of footsteps alerts him to another being and he feels a rush of panic and fear that he hadn’t felt in a long time. He’s powerless in the middle of a space prison and can think of nothing better than to hide. “Somebody’s coming!” He tells Slav, astonished when the genius wanders into the middle of the passage. “What are you doing? Are you trying to get us caught?”

“Yup.” What?

A beast-like Galra steps out of the shadows. “I’ve found you.”

Lance doesn’t stop to think about whether it’s directed at Slav or at him before he steps in front of the genius to shield him from the Galra. “Stay away from my friend.” Friend?

“Put the prison on lockdown!” The Galra yells and the doors start to close around them.

Lance runs for the door with Slav in tow. “Pidge, please do something!” He screams as they narrowly avoid being trapped in there with the now angry Galra. A small voice suggests that they turn the gravity off and use their jetpacks to meet at the entrance and Pidge agrees. Suddenly, LAnce feels himself flying through the air and quickly grabs hold of Slav and activates his jetpack, meeting Shiro and some worm-like thing.

“Oh, wow, you have Laika. The warden will not be happy about that.” The worm says.

Lance has never felt so utterly embarrassed and tries to play it off. “Who’s Laika?”

The worm nods at Slav. “She’s the warden’s pet yupper.”

He knew something was off. “Wait, what? You’re an animal?”

“Yup.”

“I see where the confusion was for you.” The worm laughs.

Pidge warns them about the incoming gravity and meets them in the hangar just in time for the warden to catch up with them. “Get to the lion!” Shiro commands.

“You steal my yupper and my prisoner?” The warden bellows. “You’re not going anywhere, and neither is the lion.” He grabs the real Slav and more Galra soldiers surround the lion. 

The feeling of weakness and hopelessness dissipates as Shiro opens the hatch and everything is sucked into open space. An alarm blares distantly and the paladins look to find Slav still in the hands of the warden. “No!” Shiro gasps.

“Wait, I got this.” Lance tells them, bringing his bayard to his face and skillfully looking down the barrel to where Slav struggles against the warden. “Come on…” he mutters, reminding himself of those times back on earth when he would practice his aiming for when the time needed it. 

He shoots.

The shot hits the warden’s arm and he lets go of Slav, who flies through the air into the paladin’s arms. “Nice, Lance!” Shiro grins. “That’s why we bring our sharpshooter.”

A feeling of pride shoots through Lance’s being and he can’t help the ‘yup’ that escapes. 

The three, plus Slav, go back to the lion and away from the prison as fast as they can. 

 

Going back to the castle with Slav was supposed to be easy, but the worm is frightened easily, especially when he learns that they would be travelling by teladuv. The trip isn’t any easier when Allura sends a distress call to them, telling them to come to the Balmera as fast as they can.

The scene upon arrival is much worse than they expected: the robotic monster they defeated before had reactivated itself and is currently attempting to destroy the castle. 

Doing their best to distract the beast until the opportune time to form Voltron, the paladins work to fight it. 

Lance finds his patience wearing thin between the impossible battle and the impossible worm they rescued. “Okay, let’s form Voltron and take this thing down like we did last time.” He grumbles, trying to sound like he’s not grumbling.

“I don’t think the Robeast is gonna sit around and wait for us to transform.” Keith snarks back.

“Keith’s right,” Shiro says. “We’ll need to think of something else.”

“Hey, at least we outnumber those crystal shields.” Hunk puts in.

Lance smiles a bit at that information. “Yeah, he can only block two of us.”

“I think I’ve got an idea.” Pidge tells them seriously. “Guys, see if you can get me an open shot at its chest.”

The paladins fly around the robot, easily distracting it until Pidge fires a shot at the beast and temporarily stops it. Quickly, they form Voltron and take the Robeast down.

Allura congratulates them on their victory as they pile in the castle and set off for Olkarion, with Slav beginning to annoy everyone on board. 

Back on Olkarion, the paladins watch the sunset for the last time before the big battle tomorrow while everyone else oversees preparations.

“What’s everybody thinking about?” Pidge asks out of the blue.

Shiro replies with a serious “Zarkon.”

“Calzones.” Hunk says, serious as well. “I mean, uh, heck, yeah, I'm thinking about calzones, okay? I mean, does it always have to be about Zarkon? He's a bad guy. We're trying to defeat him. I get it. I'm hungry.”

Keith gives a soft smile. “We've come a long way.”

“Yeah, remember when Hunk used to throw up from riding in the elevator?” Lance laughs.

Hunk groans, desperate to relieve his embarrassment. “You guys remember that Arusian, Klaizap?”

Lance laughs even more. “Yeah, Keith tried to beat him up even though he's the size of a peanut.”  
“He was their bravest warrior!” Keith defends himself.

“How about the time the food goo machines attacked us in the kitchen?” Pidge suggests, smiling too.

“That was the scariest thing that's happened to me the entire time I've been here.” Hunk shudders.

Lance finds that hard to believe. “Oh, come on.”

“What? It's the truth!” Hunk holds his hands up in surrender.

“We faced sentries, a haunted castle, giant Robeasts, a mall security guard.” Lance lists.

Pidge grins now. “And don't forget that cool cube thing.”

Lance gives her a side glance of confusion. “Yeah, and that awful cube thing.”

“You realize once we defeat Zarkon, the universe won't need Voltron anymore.” Shiro interrupts their reminiscing.

Silence permeates the air with everyone contemplating what would happen after tomorrow.

“We can return to Earth.” Lance suggests, the sheer mention of his home’s name making him want to be there even more. 

“I can look for my family.” Pidge mutters.

“I guess I could look for mine.” Keith agrees.

“This is it.” Shiro sets it in stone. “As long as everything goes according to plan, we can't fail.”

 

Everybody was in their battle positions and prepared to execute the plan until the Blade of Marmora requested that they stop.

“We’ve not yet heard from Thace. He was supposed to contact us two vargas ago.” Kolivan explains his reasons. “We need to abort the mission immediately.”

Allura still doesn’t fully trust them and will not comply with their wishes. The tension builds until Keith volunteers to sneak into the Galra ship and get the information himself. 

Lance can only sit back and wait for everything to work out as Keith finds Thace, uploads a virus to the Galra systems to shut them down, and is saved by Shiro. Meanwhile, the hidden teladuv becomes exposed after the long wait and the battle commences the moment Keith is safely in his lion again.

They form Voltron and start to attack the ship but then a large wave of power rushes through them and forces them apart, the lions’ energy completely gone. 

A robot, far larger than the ones they previously fought, flies near them; they realize that it’s Zarkon himself and the need for the lions to work becomes even greater, but the effort put into their revival stays low.

Noticing their struggle, Allura flies into the battle and attempts to bring hope back into the paladins as best she can while fighting the witch Haggar.

Shiro feels the power of her words first and uses his influence to inspire the others. “Everybody, listen. We have to fight. We have to channel all our energy. Visualize five becoming one. We have to focus everything we have into moving Voltron. We are the last thing standing in the way of Zarkon’s total universal domination. I’m not giving up that fight! Are you Hunk?”

“No.” Hunk’s voice is soft from being called on so abruptly.

“Pidge?”

“Never!” She shouts back.

“Lance?” 

He promised to protect his home a long time ago, he should protect everyone else’s home this time. “Let’s go down swinging.” He grins.

“Keith?”

“I’m all in.” The red paladin responds.

“Then let’s get Voltron back in this battle!”

The paladins cheer and the lions regain their spirit. They fly around Zarkon’s beast and coordinate attacks until Zarkon uses sheer power to separate their lions. 

Each lion still holds its own power and they continue to attack Zarkon. The absence of the Black Lion in the battle starts to worry Lance until Shiro wakes up and joins them, gaining his bayard from Zarkon in the process and developing wings in a spontaneous display of power. 

“What did you do?” Lance asks, awed by the lion in ways he had never been before.

“I’ve got Zarkon’s bayard.” Shiro says, sounding awed himself.

“You mean you’ve got your bayard.” Keith yells. “We’ve only got a few minutes left before power returns to Zarkon’s ship. Form Voltron!”

Voltron is assembled and the paladins strike Zarkon a few times before the Galra ship regains power. In a last attempt to stop Zarkon, they use all of their bayards at once to meet Zarkon’s strike with as much force as possible. A blinding light sears the eyes and minds of the paladins and they awaken with their lions separated. 

They flee the scene quickly, towing Shiro’s unresponsive lion with them until they’re safely out of the Galra’s reach, the giant teladuv making the entire process much easier. 

With Shiro still not answering, they pry open the entrance to the Black Lion and step inside.

A small shiver travels down Lance’s spine as he steps in and a foreboding feeling surrounds him as he walks to the cockpit. The empty chair greets him impassively and he inhales sharply.

“He’s gone.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This took a lot longer than I was expecting it to and it is a lot longer than I was expecting and school starts tomorrow (technically today) and I am lowkey freaking out and I almost typed beyblade instead of bayard at least ten times while writing this so I hope you guys enjoyed and I'll try to get the next part out as soon as I can. Thanks!
> 
> (this is unedited and it's 00:06 so if there are mistakes then I apologize)


End file.
